X* 



7-T ;*i* wo*fe~ st'*^ 




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THE 

RELIGION of PHILOSOPHY, 

si 

AS CONTRA-DISTINGUISHED 



FROM 



AND AS AN ANTIDOTE TO 

ITS PERNICIOUS EFFECTS, 

• Lately so evident in the Prevalence 

OF 

ASSASSINA TION fy SUICIDE. 



v 



By JOHN HARRIOTT, Esq. 

Eegtoent S|9ag titrate 

OF THE THAMES POLICE. 



1812. 



(Maurice^ Printer, Howford-build. Fenchurch-st . J 



<* 



o- 



r 



INTRODUCTION 



X he following Treatise was originally in- 
tended to be left in manuscript to my child- 
ren; being an appeal to their matured judg- 
ment, without any attempt to influence 
through the deference expected from a child 
to a parent. Finding it, however, too labo- 
rious an undertaking to multiply copies for a 
numerous and increasing offspring, and for 
some few select friends who also requested to 
have it, I have had recourse to the press for 
the purpose of a limited distribution. 



IV INTRODUCTION. 

I do not deny that I feel a strong excite- 
ment to publish it for general circulation; 
but I am not sufficiently confident of its 
merits as a literary production, to risk such an 
ordeal: I wait, therefore, until it has stood 
the test of this minor trial. The excitement I 
allude to, springs from a desire of contributing 
all in my humble power towards suppressing 
the alarming dissemination of French atheist- 
ical philosophy, which, sapping the founda- 
tion of virtuous principles, threatens destruc- 
tion to all religion and morality; the tendency 
of it being to deprive man of the cheering 
and endearing hope of an immortal exist- 
ence: a philosophy too suitable to those who 
are prone to evil, and therefore likely to be 
encouraged by them. 

To what height this lamentable evil may 
have extended in the more elevated ranks of 
society, or how considered in the higher 
walks of literature, I do not pretend to 
know. I hope to many the assertion may 
appear extraordinary, the truth of which in 
my public path of life, where I am conti- 
nually led to a knowledge of the fact, I have 
but too frequent opportunities of ascertain- 



INTRODUCTION"-. V 

ing, viz. that, among the lower and middle 
orders of society, the doctrine of this atheist- 
ical philosophy is spreading to a most alarm- 
ing degree. There are, among them, those 
who openly aver their belief that death will 
close the scene of their pleasures and pains 
for ever; and therefore their worldly wisdom 
is to take care of the present moment for 
the sensual enjoyment of all they can possibly 
grasp, utterly regardless of consequences. 
To these, death is less a terror than imme- 
diate temporary punishment, their hearts 
being hardened by the belief of a total anni- 
hilation. The common encouraging argu- 
ment among noted culprits is, " It is but a 
momentary pain, and there is an end/' 
Proofs of the existence of such belief, and 
consequent actions, are innumerable in the 
recent history of the French revolution; and 
it is not possible to conceive that men could 
have become such monsters of cruelty and 
wickedness, had they not previously fortified 
their minds by a persuasion that they were 
not to be accountable in a future existence. 
Nor are proofs wanting of a similar depravity 
in this country: murders committed without 

a 2 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

provocation, in cold blood, and with but 
slight expectation of advantage, have greatly 
increased of late: the English character 
seems changed. A mono; instances of minor 
note, within the last few years, the case of 
the monster Williams stands conspicuous. 
A man of some education, apparent mildness 
of character, in the prime of life, and with- 
out any other incitement than the obtaining 
a little money to lengthen his sensual enjoy- 
ments awhile on shore: this miserably de- 
ceived and inhuman wretch could deliberately 
undertake, no matter with or without accom- 
plices, to massacre and destroy, in an indis- 
criminate horrid manner, two families, in 
the whole seven people, with all of whom he 
was on a friendly footing; and then, to 
confirm the infernal atheistical doctrine he 
had imbibed, as soon as he found himself 
charged on suspicion, could as fearlessly as 
wickedly launch himself into eternity; so 
heavily laden with guilt, with sins of so 
deadly a nature, as to preclude the hope of 
divine mercy, but by ages of suffering re- 
pentance. I do most assuredly believe, 
therefore, that the misguided wretch Williams 



INTRODUCTION. VI* 

could never have become so inhumanly de- 
praved, a monster, but from the pernicious 
tendency of the modern infidelity respecting 
a state of future rewards and punishments, 
consequent on the good or ill conduct of 
mortals in this life. The cool premeditated 
murder of Mr. Perceval, with other recent 
assassinations, all tend to prove the prevalence 
of such destructive infernal doctrines. 

Books on religious subjects are mostly 
confined, in the reading, to those within the 
pale of the writer's faith, or to controver- 
sialists. Those who are of a different faith, 
generally speaking, when they hear of a 
publication on the subject of religion, in- 
quire whether the author is not a clergyman, 
and, if so, will too often exclaim, " He is 
a hired interested writer/' whatever sect he 
may belong to, " engaged to defend a sys- 
tem, which he dares neither discuss nor rec- 
tify/' Now I ail), a mere practical man, and 
in the present instance can have no other 
interest to serve, or any wish, beyond that of 
doing all the little good I am able; and, with 
the blessing of God, I hope this may be 
productive of some. 



HI! INTRODUCTION. 

Good men, of all religions, must be equal 
in the eye of Omnipotence, if mercy, just- 
ice, and integrity, are the leading principles 
of their conduct; for it is not in the power 
of a conscientious good man to coerce his 
faith: to say that he changes, against con- 
viction, is declaring himself a hypocrite and 
not to be trusted. If a good man is so 
unfortunate as to entertain notions repugnant 
to the established doctrines of the country 
he is born in, that, not depending upon his 
will, can never be imputed to him as a crime. 
In- truth, religion may be comprised in few 
words; gratitude to God and love to our 
fellow-creatures . 

In bringing up my ow^n children, I have 
contented myself with inculcating on their 
minds a strong pious sense of obligation to 
their Almighty Creator, and the beneficial 
effects of performing their moral duties with 
rectitude in this life, without disturbing their 
minds, while } f oung, with controversial doc- 
trines concerning faith, which might have 
perplexed them with doubts and unfitted 
them for performing the moral duties. To 
persuade them to act aright, has been my 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

chief aim, and I am well satisfied with the 
produce of fruit from the seed that was 
sown. 

On men of serious reflection, of all deno- 
minations of religion, it is also a duty to 
endeavour, by sound rational argument, to 
stop the progress of so alarming an evil as 
the modern atheism or French philosophy. 
Strong, however, as my desires are to contri- 
bute my mite towards so great a good, the 
inadequacy of my abilities for arranging and 
composing any thing like a Treatise to meet 
the public eye, on a subject of such infinite 
importance, would have deterred me from 
the undertaking, had I not, in the course of 
my extensive travelling opportunities, made 
minutes and taken extracts from manuscripts 
and books whenever I have found my senti- 
ments comprised in better language than my 
own. My desert is chiefly the having, in 
my researches, noticed and gathered some 
flowers, particularly in America, that proba- 
bly might have bloomed and died unnoticed, 
had I not thus transplanted what I thought 
most deserving. In like manner, I have 
culled sentences and paragraphs from authors 



X INTRODUCTION. 

at home, when, in the small circle of my 
reading, I have found my thoughts explained 
in stronger language than I was master of, 
which I copied at the time for the purpose of 
improving my own scanty knowledge of 
composition; and now, in a work of this 
serious nature, I rejoice in having recourse to 
such strength. At the same time, I regret 
that I cannot, owing to my neglect in not 
minuting the works, render the respective 
authors, from whom I have taken such ex- 
tracts, their just due, by naming them, 
though but for a single sentence; more es- 
pecially, as I am persuaded that the argu- 
ments would have been strengthened by their 
authority. If I could save a fellow-creature's 
life, by the aid of another person's boat or 
vehicle of any kind, I would cheerfully 
acknowledge such assistance, nor conceive 
that I depreciated my own exertions in the 
work of salvation, by mentioning the owner 
or person who originally built it. 

I am well aware, that this account of my 
compiling the Treatise will be no recommen- 
dation to the learned, should it ever come 
into their hands for perusal; but, if the ar- 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

guments are rightly stated, and the inferences 
justly drawn, they will stand the test of 
truth; and truth, though humbly clad, if 
conveyed in language that may be the easiest 
understood by those whose intellects have 
not been so highly illuminated by learning, 
is, I conceive, likeliest to produce the de- 
sired effect which I have humbly contem- 
plated, being better calculated, by its plain 
simplicit}^, for the meridian of common un- 
derstandings. It may probably be said, that 
I have not advanced all that might be ad- 
duced in proof of my positions. This I 
readily admit; but I have done my best; 
let others do better; and I earnestly solicit 
the aid of more able advocates in so good 
and great a cause as proving the Religion of 
Philosophy, or in other words the Wisdom of 
Religion; and, whilst I confine myself to the 
light of Nature, as the guide of my reason- 
ing, it will become the scholar and divine to 
exert their greater abilities, by advocating 
from scripture and adducing aid from revela- 
tion. 

The better to obtain this desirable end, and 
shun giving offence to any, I have cautiously 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

avoided mentioning or even alluding to any 
of the various systems of religion prevailing, 
more or less, over the face of the dobe. 
The Treatise is written on general principles 
of sound reason, and is addressed to man- 
kind generally. It is founded on that rock 
on which every subordinate faith is and must 
be built, and it is accordingly hoped that 
liberal well-meaning men, of all persuasions, 
may read it without finding any thing in it 
to offend, notwithstanding the argument may 
not have been extended sufficiently to gratify 
each in their own particular faith; and, 
having maturely considered the rationality of 
the arguments, they may deduce every possible 
consolation from the contemplation of God's 
gracious providence, which holds forth to all 
mankind the great endearing hope of a 
blessed futurity. 

Were I born in Turkey, and to announce 
myself of the Mahometan faith, with all the 
zealous strength of argument arising from 
beins: born and educated in such faith, it is 
not to be expected that either Christians, 
Jews, or heathens, would deign to look at 
the Treatise. And even among the Maho- 



INTRODUCTION. Xlll 

metans themselves, who are divided into as 
many different sectaries and are as much at 
variance with each other as the Christians, 
&c. were it known that I was a believer in 
Mahomet as a sectarist and follower of pecu- 
liar doctrines, I may venture to assert, that 
fifteen if not nineteen out of twenty would 
refuse acknowledging me as a true Mussul- 
man believer, and therefore would not consider 
me as deserving attention. It would be the same 
among Christians, Jews, and heathens, and 
still more so among the atheistical infidels* 
mid wicked of all denominations, who fail 
not in decrying whatever absurdities are to 
be found in any particular sectary, to 
strengthen the ground of their infidelity; and 
who are desirous of crediting that hereafter 
they will not be accountable for their conduct 
in this world. For these reasons, I consider 
myself justified in withholding any declara- 
tion as to the particular tenets of my own 
religion, which to those who know me well is 
hot wanted, and to those who know me not 
is unnecessary; for fear that it might tend to 
prevent and defeat my purpose, that of 
obtaining an unbiassed attention to the argu- 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

ments, proving the prevailing doctrine of 
French atheistical infidelity to be most wick- 
edly erroneous, and fraught with incalculable 
destructive mischief to all mankind. I hope, 
therefore, it will suffice for me to declare, in 
general terms, that I rejoice in being a 
Christian, a true follower of Christ, as I read, 
and do flatter myself that I understand the 
doctrine of Christ, as taught by himself. 

I am now fast approaching the verge of 
that bourn from whence no mortal has re- 
turned to tell his tale of wonders, but where 
'every thing like doubt will vanish: it is an 
aweful, hopeful, joyful expectancy after tra- 
velling through a long probationary exist- 
ence, which I trust and hope will be ac- 
cepted at the throne of mercy. I consider 
it as a sacred duty and obligation in me to 
leave my most serious contemplations on the 
providence of God, to my children, for 
them to profit by; and, as it is my duty not 
to withhold those contemplations, it will be 
theirs to consider them well. 

Among the nations of the earth, in every 
quarter of the globe, I have sought to read 
the mind of man. I have likewise sought, 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

with reverential attention, to study and un- 
derstand the will of the Almighty Creator, 
as revealed to man in his works of creation, 
which he has given to all alike to contem- 
plate. Consonant to this grand display of 
the Almighty Power and Providence, re- 
vealed for the mind of man to studv, whether 
savage or philosopher, I have observed among 
all nations one uniform principle, in which 
all agree; a firm belief in a God. This is 
the rock on which all men build their hopes 
of an immortality; a faith, which no earthly 
power can shake from its foundation, or 
make a conscientious godly man swerve 
from, whether Christian, Mahometan, Jew, 
or Gentile: it was the rock of the Royal 
Psalmist, to whom Christians, Jews, and 
Mahometans, bow with reverence : good men 
may possibly be induced to swerve from one 
subordinate faith to another, but never from 
their faith in God Almighty. To this grand 
universal truth, all Nature speaks aloud; all 
that comes within the scope of man's limited 
power to discern; all that man can conceive 
of the planetary system of worlds beyond 
worlds in the infinitude of space; all, all, 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

tend to confirm the great incontrovertible 
truth, the existence of an eternal, omniscient, 
and beneficent Mind, whose power is unli- 
mited in his nature as God. 

It is this uniform consonance between the 
finite mind of men of all religious persua- 
sions, intuitive, as it were, in the universal 
belief in an infinite Being who governs the 
universe, which induces a hope that a Trea- 
tise like this, founded on general principles, 
should it hereafter be deemed deserving of ge- 
neral publication, may be acceptable to all 
religious good men, and may tend to convert 
the atheist; leaving him, then, at perfect 
liberty to follow such other points of doctri- 
nal faith as his conscience and reason may 
dictate. 

I trust that there is not a sentence of an 
immoral tendencv to be found in the follow- 
ing pages, and I hope there may be found 
abundance of rational argument to convince 
and satisfy those who have been led astray 
by the destructive philosophy of modern 
infidels, that there is a righteous just God, 
to whom we are to look for judgment, and to 
be accountable for the good and evil of our 



INTRODUCTION. XV11 

free agency of conduct in this probationary 
life; and that there is every rational certainty 
that the soul of man, when separated from 
the mortal man, will enter into a state of im- 
mortality. 

Imperfections in the work, as a literary 
production, I have no doubt may be found; 
for which, I have no other apology to offer 
than the inability to make it better ; and the 
paramount desire of doing good must be my 
shield against the shafts of criticism. 



THE 



RELIGION of PHILOSOPHY 



CHAPTER I. 



1. 

A knowledge of the Being, Perfections, 
Power, and Providence, of God, most 
desirable. 

1 he desire of knowledge has ensued the 
attention of the wise ancfc curious among 
mankind, in all ages. This has extended 
the arts and sciences far and wide in the 

B 



2 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

several quarters of the globe, and excited 
the mind to explore Nature's laws, in a gra- 
dual series of improvement, until philosophy, 
astronomy, geography, and history, with ma- 
ny other branches of science, have arrived 
to a great degree of perfection. 

It is nevertheless to be regretted, that the 
bulk of mankind, even in those nations 
which are most celebrated for learning and 
wisdom, are still carried down the torrent of 
superstition, and entertain very unworthy 
conceptions of the being, perfections, power, 
atad providence of God, and of their duty to 
him. It becomes, therefore, the philosophic 
friends of human nature, to exert them- 
selves by all lawful, wise, and prudent means 
to enlighten the minds of men with those 
great and sublime truths concerning God and 
his Providence, as well as to impress upon 
them their obligations to moral rectitude, 
which, in this world and that to come, can- 
not fail greatly to affect their happiness and 
well-being. 

Though, "none, by searching, can find 
out God, or the Almighty, to perfection/' 
yet I am persuaded, that, if mankind would 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 3 

<lare to exercise their reason as freely on 
those divine topics as they do in the common 
concerns of life, they would in a great 
measure rid themselves of their blindness and 
superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God 
and their obligations to him and to one 
another, and be proportionably delighted and 
blessed with the views of his moral govern- 
ment ; that they would make better members 
of society, and acquire many powerful incen- 
tives to the practice of morality, which is the 
last, best, and greatest, perfection that human 
nature is capable of, and appears to be the 
grand design of our probationary state of 
existence. 



Jb'tctfott 2. 

Of the Being of a God. 

The laws of Nature having subjected man- 
kind to a state of absolute dependence on 

b2 



4 THE RELIGION" OF PHILOSOPHY. 

something out of, and manifestly beyond, 
themselves, or the compound exertion of their 
natural powers, gave them the first conception 
of a superior principle existing; otherwise, 
they could have had no possible conception 
of a superintending power. 

But this sense of dependency, which results 
from experience and reasoning on the facts 
which every day cannot fail to produce, has 
uniformly established the knowledge of our 
dependence in the minds of all who are 
rational, necessarily enforcing the idea of a 
ruling power, or, that there is a God. 

This gives the first idea of a Deitj^, and 
powerfully attracts the rational mind to make 
farther discoveries; which, through the weak- 
ness of human reasonings, opens a door for 
errors and mistakes respecting the divine es- 
sence; though there is no possibility of our 
being deceived in our conceptions of a super- 
intending power. 

The globe, with all its productions; the 
planets in their motions ; and the starry hea- 
vens in their magnitude ; surprise our senses 
and confound our reason, in their munificent 
lessons of instruction concerning God; by 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. O 

means of which we are apt to be more or less 
lost in our ideas of the object of divine ado- 
ration ; though, at the same time, every one 
is truly sensible, that their being and preser- 
vation is from God. We are too apt to con- 
found our ideas of God with his works, and to 
take the latter for the former. Thus, some bar- 
barous and unlearned nations have imagined, 
that, inasmuch as the sun in its influence is 
beneficial to them, in bringing forward the 
spring of the year, causing the production 
of vegetation, and food for their subsistence, 
it is therefore their God ; while others have 
selected other parts of creation, and as- 
cribed to them the prerogatives of God ; 
mere creatures and images have been substi- 
tuted to be gods by the wickedness or weak- 
ness of man, or both together. It seems, that 
mankind, in most ages and parts of the world, 
have been fond of corporeal deities, with whom 
their outward senses might be gratified ; or 
have as fantastically been diverted from a just 
conception of the true God, by a supposed 
supernatural intercourse with invisible and 
mere spiritual beings, to whom they ascribed 
divinity, so that, through one means or other, 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the character of the true God has been much 
neglected, to the great detriment of truth, 
justice, and morality, in the world : nor is it 
possible, that mankind can be unif orm in tb 
religious opinions, or worship of God, accord- 
s' to knowlec. xcept they can form a 
consistent arrangement of ideas of the divine 
character; this, thereto: all be the great 

object of our pursuit. 

Although a sense of dependency disck 
to our minds the certainty or s upreme 
Being, yet. it does not point out to i 
object, nature, or perfections, of tl 
this belongs to the province of reason. As 
far as we understand Nature, so far are 

become acquainted with the character of 
God ; for, the knowledge of Nature is the 
elation of God. 

If we form in our imagination a compen- 
dious idea of the harmony of the universe, it 
ime as calling God by the name of 
harmony, for there could be no harmony 
without regulation, and no regulation without 
a regulator, which is expressive of the idea of 
a God : nor is it possible that there could be 
order or dborder, except we admit of such a 



THE KILIGI 7 PH11DSOPHT. 

tin* as creation* and creation contains in it 
the idea of a creator, which is another appd- 
lation for the Divine Being, d%tmgaklimg 
God own Ins creation. Furthermore, there 
coold be no proportion. figure- or motion, 
without wisdom and power: wisdom to plan, 
and power to execute: and these an? perfec- 
tions, when applied to the works of Nature. 
which dearly signny the agency or snperin- 
tendency of God. If we consider Nature to 
be matter, figure, and motion, ^e indude the 
idea of God in that of motion: for motion 
implies a mover much as creation does a 

creator. It- firom the composition, texture, 
and tendency of the universe in general, we 
farm a complex idea of general good result- 
ing therefrom to mankind, we implicitly ad- 
mit a God, by the name of good, induct ■ 
die idea of his providence to man : and brum 
hence arises our obligations to lore and adore 
God. because he provides for and is bene- 
ficent to us : abstract the idea of goodness 
firom the character of God, and it would can- 
ed all our obligations to him. 

For mankind to hate truth, as it may bring 
their evil deeds tc light, and be attended with 



8 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY, 

punishment, is very easy and common ; but to 
hate truth as truth, or God as God, which 
is the same as to hate goodness for its own 
sake, unconnected with any other conse- 
quences^ is impossible even to a diabolical 
nature itself. If we advert to the series of 
the causes of our being and preservation in 
the world, we shall commence a retrospect- 
ive examination from son to father, grandfa- 
ther and great grandfather, and so on, to the 
supreme and self-existent Father of all ; and, 
as to the means of our preservation or suc- 
ceeding causes of it, we may begin with pa- 
rental kindness, in nourishing, succouring, 
and providing for us in our helpless age ; al- 
ways remembering it to have originated from 
our Eternal Father, who planted that power- 
ful and sympathetic affection in the bosoms 
of our earthly parents. 

By extending our ideas to a larger circle, 
we shall perceive our dependence on the 
earth and waters of the globe which we in- 
habit, and from which we are bounteously 
fed, and comfortably clothed ; and next, ex- 
tending our ideas to the sun, whose apparent 
fiery mass darts its brilliant rays of light to 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 9 

our terraqueous globe, with amazing velocity, 
and whose region of inexhaustible fire (ac- 
cording to the general conception of man- 
kind) supplies it with fervent heat, causing 
vegetation, and providing the various seasons 
of the year with ten thousand charms. This 
we are conscious is not the work of man, but 
the workmanship and providence of an Al- 
mighty God. But how the sun is supplied 
with materials thus to perpetuate its kind 
influences, we know not; yet will any one 
deny the reality of those beneficial influences, 
because we do not understand the manner of 
the perpetuity of that fiery world, or how it 
became such a body of fire, as our sensations 
seem to convince us it must be? Or, will any 
one deny the reality of nutrition by food, 
because we do not understand the secret ope- 
ration of the digestive powers of animal na- 
ture, or the minute particulars of its nourish- 
ing influence? None will be so stupid as to 
do it. Equally absurd would it be for us to 
deny the providence of God, by " whom we 
live, move, and have our being, yi because we 
cannot comprehend it. 

The evidence of the being and providence 



10 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of God is so full and complete, that we can- 
not miss of discerning it, if we but open our 
eyes, and reflect on the visible creation. The 
benefit accruing to us from reflection, reason- 
ing, and argument, as it respects our know- 
ledge and practice, is to explore the truth of 
things, as they are in their own nature; this is 
our wisdom, all other conceptions of things 
are false and .imaginary ; we cannot exercise 
a thought on any thing that has a positive 
existence, which will not, if we trace it tho- 
roughly, centre in an independent cause, and 
give evidence of a God. Thus, it is from 
the works of Nature that we explore its great 
Author: but the very best and most inquisi- 
tive of mortal minds are all lost in their re- 
searches into the immensity of the divine ful- 
ness, because, the infinite mind of the Creator 
has ordained, thus far shall the finite mind of 
man go, and no farther. 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 11 



&ttttott 3. 

The Manner of discovering the moral 
Perfections and natural Attributes of 
God. 

Having offered what appear to be in- 
disputable reasons to evince the certainty of 
the being and providence of God, and of 
his goodness to man through the intervention 
of the series of Nature's operations, which 
are commonly described by the name of na- 
tural causes, we come now more particularly 
to the consideration of his moral perfections : 
and, though all finite beings fall as much 
short of an adequate knowledge of them, as 
they do of perfection itself, nevertheless, 
through the intelligence of our own souls, we 
may entertain something of a perspective 
idea of the divine perfections ; for, though 
the human mind bears no proportion to the 
divine, yet there must be some resemblance 



12 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

between them : for instance ; God knows all 
things, and we know some things, and in the 
things we do understand, our knowledge 
agrees with the divine, and cannot fail of 
necessarily corresponding with it. To know 
a thing is the same as to have a right idea of 
it, or ideas according to truth ; and truth is 
uniform in all rational minds, the divine 
mind not excepted. It will not be disputed, 
but that mankind in plain and common mat- 
ters understand justice from injustice, truth 
from falsehood, right from wrong, virtue from 
'vice, and praise-worthiness from blame-wor- 
thiness, for otherwise they could not be ac- 
countable creatures. This being admitted, 
we are capable of forming a complex idea of 
a moral character, which, when done in the 
most deliberate, wisest, and most rational 
manner in our power, we feel convinced bears 
some resemblance to the divine perfections. 
For, as we learn, from the works of Nature, 
an idea of the power and wisdom of God, 
so, from -our own rational nature, we have an 
idea of his moral perfections. 

But mere power and wisdom, abstractedly 
considered from justice, goodness, and truth, 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 13 

are not necessarily connected with a moral 
character, as applicable to man; as many 
tyrants have demonstrated, who have been 
wise to plan and powerful to execute unjust 
wars, to the ruin and destruction of their 
species. But, on the other hand, when pow- 
er and wisdom are in the possession of pa- 
triot governors, they subserve mankind. But 
as God is unchangeably and infinitely just 
and good, as well as infinitely wise and pow- 
erful, he can therefore never vary from the 
rectitude of his moral character, and conse- 
quently, his power and wisdom, though not 
included in his moral perfections (being his 
natural attributes) cannot act in opposition 
to his moral character. For, of all possible 
systems, infinite wisdom must have eternally 
discerned the best,, and infinite justice, good- 
ness, and truth, approved it, and infinite 
power effected it. This conclusion is meant 
in respect to the creation and providence of 
God only, and not to affect the liberty of 
man in making his choice of good or evil, 
which God, in his infinite wisdom and inscru- 
table designs, has left free. 

Prom what has been observed, on the mo- 



14 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ral perfections of God, we may infer, that 
all rational beings, who have an idea of just- 
ice, goodness, and truth, have at the same 
time either a greater or less idea of the moral 
perfections of God. It is by reason that we 
are able to compound an idea of a moral 
character, whether applied to God or man ; 
it is this which gives us the supremacy over 
the irrational part of the creation ; and it is 
that by which we may truly be said to be 
-"made after the image of God." 



Of the Eternity and Infinity of God. 

To ask, how God came to be, implies a 
contradiction to his being, as God, inasmuch 
as it supposes him to have come from, and 
to be dependent on, some pre-existing cause, 
which holds up to our view the character of 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 15 

a finite and dependent being. But if we ex- 
tend our minds retrospectively on the chain 
of pre-existing causes, as far as human na- 
ture can extend, still we are at as great a re- 
move from a God, as when we first attempt 
the order of pre-existing causes; for a mere 
succession of causes cannot extend them 
ad infinitum. If we conceive God to have 
existed from eternity, and that he will exist to 
eternity ; in this conception, we form an idea 
that God existed in time, and that in time he 
will cease to be; viz. from a certain era 
called eternity, he existed to a second era, 
called by the same name, that is from one 
epocha to another ; and on this position, 
there would have been an eternity preceding 
his existence, and another succeeding it, as it 
is often expressed from the desk, " from eter- 
nity to eternity, thou art God," which is dia- 
metrically inconsistent with a just idea of 
eternity. God did not come to be, but was, 
nor did he exist from eternity, but eternally 
existed, and will eternally exist. Though 
eternity includes an idea of existence or dura- 
tion, as applicable to God, without beginning 
or end, yet it is necessary, in discussing the 



16 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

subject of eternal existence, to divide it into 
the preceding and succeeding eternity, as 
they may be considered separately by the 
mind; but to consider it complexly, it is but 
one entire eternity, without beginning or end; 
and the idea of existence without beginning 
or end, contains in it an idea of self-existence 
and independence, of any pre-existing cause ; 
but an existence from eternity necessarily im- 
plies either from a certain time, or from a 
certain pre-existing cause, called by the name 
of eternity, which runs into the absurdity of 
the derivation of a God, from the chain of 
supposed pre-existing causes, which, it is 
hoped, has already been sufficiently con- 
futed. 

Self-existence is the highest appellation we 
can ascribe to God, for nothing short of that 
can render him independent, and establish a 
just sense of his divinity and eternity: and 
although we cannot comprehend this myste- 
rious manner of existence, yet we can com- 
prehend that any manner of existence short 
of or inferior to that which is self-existent, 
must necessarily be dependent, consequent- 
ly imperfect and utterly devoid of any right- 



THE RELIGION OE PHILOSOPHY. 17 

iul pretensions of a God ; for, that which is 
not self-existent, must necessarily be depend- 
ent on that which is so, or it could not exist, 
except we suppose, that a dependent exist- 
ence can exist independently, which is inad- 
missible. 

The existence of God, then, must be 
eternal and infinite, without beginning or 
end. Let us suppose a mathematical, eter- 
nal, or endless line, endless both ways : 
every part of it would be equally in the 
middle * or, more properly speaking, there 
would be no middle or centre to it, inas- 
much as it is supposed to be endless : so 
that, were a cannon ball to be discharged on 
either direction of such a supposed line, at 
any given time, and suppose it to continue 
its velocity, (which is the same as succession 
or motion,) with unabated rapidity for ever, it 
would never reach the endless extension of 
that line; for, that which is without begin-* 
ning or end, is eternal, and cannot be mea- 
sured or comprehended by the succession of 
numbers or motion, or by any thing that is 
capable of calculation, from the order of 
time ; for which reason it is in nature impos- 

c 



18 THE RELIGION OV PHILOSOPHY. 

sible to trace the series of natural causes, up 
to the self-existent and eternal cause. God 
is a cause uncaused and eternally self-exist- 
ent, who gave being and order to Nature, and 
for this reason we cannot trace the foot- 
steps of the Creator, by a succession of cau- 
ses up to the eternal cause, (for, that the se- 
ries is also eternal,) any more than we can 
trace an endless line, by the motion of a 
cannon ball. Existence without a beginning, 
a line without end, or an eternal series of 
natural causes, are each and every of them 
beyond our calculations of succession, motion, 
or progression, which are made on the fleeting 
moments of time. 

To suppose, that an eternal series of natu- 
ral causes begins with a first cause, is the 
same as supposing a beginning to the exist- 
ence of God, and, consequently, that the se- 
ries is not eternal, but that there was a pre- 
vious eternity, which is a downright contra- 
diction to the eternity of God. According 
to the rules of chronology, a first ahvays im- 
plies a particular era : thus Moses represents 
God to be under six thousand years old, at 
present : his w r ords are these ; " in the begin- 



THE 11ELIGI0N OF PHILOSOPHY. 19 

ning, God created the heavens and the earth/' 
This epocha is calculated from the Jewish 
chronology, which wants but few figures to 
compute. The Chinese ascribe an era of 
about forty thousand years existence to their 
God ; but these are only different beginnings 
and do neither of them explain the eternal, 
self-existent cause. It may be said, that 
Moses spake only with respect to the creation 
of the " heavens and the earth:" be it so, 
yet if, in any part of space, there had been 
any previous display of creation, that which 
Moses was speaking of could not have been 
the beginning. 

In discoursing thus freely on creation, I 
do not confine my ideas to the creation of 
the earth that we inhabit, nor even to the 
starry worlds within our ken : my conception 
(feeble as it is) of the creation emanating 
from the eternal infinite Creator, soars far 
beyond our visible part of God's creation; 
insomuch, as to feel assured, that a creation 
of some nature must have perpetually ex- 
isted, within the immensity of space, under 
and by the will of the eternal Almighty God. 

c 2 



20 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY* 

Proceeding to inquire into the infinity of 
God, we will premise, that there is no medi- 
um between infinite and finite, as applied to 
God, or to his works of Nature, (which are 
the same as his creation and providence,) or 
as applied to mere space. God displays his 
providence in a series of Nature's operations. 
Infinity is boundless and unlimited ; but fini- 
tude is circumscribed and limited, between 
which there is no comparison or proportion. 
A supposed infinite nature or space would be 
as unlimited all possible ways, as that of an 
eternal line may be supposed to be two ways, 
and every part of its immensity would be void 
of a centre. 

Circumference necessarily admits of a 
centre, and though ever so extensive, comes 
within the description of finitude; but im- 
mensity, having no circumference, is also 
without a centre ; so that the rapid motion of 
a cannon ball, for ever, could not extend itself 
through immensity, for, that which is bound- 
less cannot be explored and comprehended 
by the succession of motion, or any progres- 
sive operation, or by the addition of nume- 
rical parts, though they should be supposed 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 21 

to be ever so large and numerous ; inasmuch 
as every of them is supposed to be local, 
they would make but a local whole; and fi- 
nally bear no proportion to infinite nature, 
(which comprehends all things,) or to infinite 
space : so, with respect to an infinite mind, 
it is not included in any place, or excluded 
from any place, but fills immensity with co- 
gitation, and perfectly understands all things, 
and is possessed of all possible powers, per- 
fections, and excellences, without addition or 
diminution. 

This is a summary of the infinitude of 
God, consisting of wisdom, power, justice, 
goodness, and truth, with their eternally con- 
nected and almighty operations, co-extensive 
with the immense fulness of things. 



22 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPH V . 



The Cause of Idolatry and the Remedy. 

Inasmuch as God is not corporeal, and 
consequently does not and cannot come 
within the notice of our bodily sensations, 
we are therefore obliged to deduce inferences 
from his providence, and particularly from 
our own rational nature, in order to form our 
conceptions of the divine character; but 
through inattention, want of learning, or 
the natural imbecility of mankind, or through 
the artifice of designing persons, or all together, 
men have been greatly divided and subdi- 
vided in their notions of God. Many have 
so groped in the dark as wholly to mistake 
the proper object of divine worship; and, not 
distinguishing the Creator from his creation, 
have paid adoration to " four-footed beasts 
and creeping things/' Some have ascribed di- 
vine honours to the sun, moon, or stars; while 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 23 

others have been so infatuated as to worship 
dumb, senseless, and unintelligent idols, which 
derived their existence, as gods, partly from 
mechanics, who gave them their figure, pro- 
portion, and beauty, and partly from their 
priests, who gave them their attributes ; 
whose believers it appears were so wrought 
on, that they cried out, in the extacy of their 
deluded zeal, "great is Diana!' Whatever 
delusions have taken place in the world, rela- 
tive to the object of divine worship* or re- 
specting the indecencies or immoralities of 
the respective superstitions themselves, or by 
what means soever introduced or perpe- 
tuated; whether bv designing; men, whose 
interest it has been to impose on the weak- 
ness of the great mass of the vulgar ; or,, as 
it is probable, that part of those delusions 
took place in consequence of the weakness 
of uncultivated reason, in deducing a visible 
instead of an invisible God from the works 
of nature: be this, I say, as it will, mankind- 
are generally possessed of an idea, that there is 
a God, however they may have been mis- 
taken or misled as to the object. This notion 
of a God, as before observed, must have ori- 



24 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ginated in a universal sense of dependence 
which mankind have on something that is 
more wise, powerful, and beneficent than 
themselves, or they could have had no ap- 
prehension of any superintending principle in 
the universe, and consequently would never 
have sought after a God, or have had any 
conception of his existence : nor could design- 
ing men have imposed on their credulity, by 
obtruding false gods upon them; for, taking- 
advantage of the common belief, that there 
is a God, they artfully deceived their adhe- 
rents with regard to the object to be adored. 
There are some sorts of idols which have 
no existence but in the mere imagination of 
the human mind, and these are by far the 
most numerous, and universally spread over 
the world: the wisest of mankind are not, 
and cannot be, wholly exempt from them, 
inasmuch as every wrong conception of God 
is (as far as the error takes place in the mind) 
idolatrous. To give an instance; the idea of 
a jealous God is of that sort: "The Lord, thy 
God, is a jealous God." Jealousy is the off- 
spring of finite minds, proceedng from the 
want of knowledge, which in dubious mat- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 25 

ters makes us suspicious and distrustful; but, 
in matters which we clearly understand, there 
can be no jealousy, for knowledge excludes it, 
so that to ascribe it to God, is a manifest in- 
fringement of his omniscience. 

The idea of a revengeful God is likewise 
one of that sort ; but this idea of divinity, being 
borrowed from a savage nature, needs no 
further confutation. The representation of a 
God, who (as we are told by certain di- 
vines) from all eternity elected an inconsider- 
able part of mankind to eternal life, and 
reprobated the rest to eternal damnation, mere- 
ly from his own sovereignty, adds another to 
the number: this representation of the Deity 
undoubtedly took its rise from that which we 
discover in great, powerful, and wicked ty- 
rants among men. However, tradition may 
since have contributed to its support; though 
I am apprehensive that a belief in those 
who adhere to this doctrine, that they them- 
selves constitute that blessed elect number, 
has been a greater inducement to them to em- 
brace it, than all other motives put together. 
It is a selfish and inferior notion of a God ; 
void of justice, goodness, and truth, and has a 



26 THE RELIGION OE PHILOSOPHY. 

natural tendency to impede the cause of true 
religion and morality in the world, and is 
diametrically repugnant to the truth of the 
divine character: if admitted to be true, it 
overturns all religion, wholly precluding the 
agency of mankind in either their salvation or 
damnation; resolving the whole into the so- 
vereign disposal of a tyrannical and unjust 
being, which is offensive to reason and com- 
mon sense, and subversive of moral rectitude 
in general. But it is not my design so much 
to confute the multiplicity of false representa- 
tions of a God, as to represent just and con- 
sistent ideas of the true God. I shall therefore 
forbear any farther observations on them; 
with this remark, however, that all unjust re- 
presentations or ideas of a God, are so many 
detractions from his character among man- 
kind, and that, to remedy these idolatrous 
notions of a God, it is requisite to form right 
and consistent ideas in their stead. 

The discovery of truth necessarily excludes 
errors from the mind, which nothing else can 
possibly do; for some notion or other of a 
God will force itself into the mind of de- 
pendent creatures, who, if they are not so 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 27 

happy as to form just ones, will substitute 
erroneous and delusive ones in their stead; so 
that it serves no valuable purpose to mankind, 
to confute their idolatrous opinions concerning 
God, without communicating to them just 
notions concerning the true God; for, if this is 
not effected, nothing is done to the purpose. 
For, as has been before observed, mankind will 
form to themselves, or receive from others, an 
idea of divinity, either right or wrong. This 
is the universal voice of intelligent nature, from 
whence a weighty and conclusive argument 
may be drawn of the reality of a God, how- 
ever inconsistent many of the conceptions of 
him may be. The fact is, mankind readily 
perceive there is a God, by feeling their de- 
pendence on him; and, as they explore his 
works, and observe his providence, which is too 
sublime for finite capacities to understand but 
in part, they have been more or less confound- 
ed in their discoveries of a just idea of a God, 
and of his moral government. Therefore, we 
should exercise great application and care, 
whenever we essay to speculate upon the 
divine character, accompanied with a sincere 
desire after truth; and not ascribe any thing 



28 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to his perfections or government, which is 
inconsistent with reason or the best infor- 
mation which we are able to comprehend of 
moral rectitude. 

It is a subject requiring the most serious 
meditations and the most active vigour of a 
man's mind, during life; and towards the 
close of such a life, when length of years 
gives additional strength; when pride and 
vanity for the things of this world have lost 
their strong hold, and his thoughts concentre 
more towards another world ; then, his medi- 
tations and consequent confirmed opinion 
concerning the Being, Perfections, Creation, 
and Providence, of God, may be presumed 
to be the best legacy he can bequeath to his 
children and to his fellow man. 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 29 



CHAPTER II. 



&tcttott ! 

On the Eternity of Creation. 

As creation was the result of eternal and 
infinite wisdom, justice, goodness, and truth, 
and effected by infinite power, it is, like its 
great Author, mysterious to us. How it 
could be accomplished, or in what manner 
performed, can never be comprehended by 
any capacity, but that by whose almighty 
fiat it was executed. Yet, from the neces- 
sary attributes, perfections, eternity, and 
infinity of God, we may demonstrate that 



30 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY* 

creation must also have been eternal and 
infinite. I would be understood as meaning 
that there must have existed an eternity of 
ideas in an omniscient Being, by whose al- 
mighty fiat creation was called into action, 
in his own fullness and fitness of time. Had 
it not been eternal, there could not have 
been an eternal display of those divine attri- 
butes and perfections, which necessarily con- 
stitute a God* 

To suppose God to have been self-existent 
and eternal, but inactive until some certain 
era, or period of time, when he may have 
been said to have commenced the work of 
creation, would imply a contradiction in his 
nature as God, as on this thesis there would 
have been an eternity previous to the era of 
creation; for time or duration without begin- 
ing to any certain epocha, is equally eternal 
as time from such epocha without end; the 
one respects the preceding and the other the 
succeeding eternity. Though Providence, which 
is the exertion or operation of Nature, is con- 
tinued in an eternal series, eternal creation is 
no more than eternal exertion or action : the 
one is as mysterious as the other, and disput- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY* 31 

ing against them, is neither more nor less than 
disputing against the eternity of God. Eter- 
nal, whether applied to duration, existence, 
action, or creation, is incomprehensible to us, 
but implies no contradiction in either of them ; 
for that which is above our comprehension, we 
cannot perceive to be contradictory, nor on 
the other hand can we perceive its rationality or 
consistency. We are certain that God is a ra- 
tional, w r ise, understanding Being, because he 
has in a degree made us so; and his wisdom, 
power, and goodness, are visible to us in his 
creation and government of the world. From 
these facts we are justly induced to ac- 
knowledge him, and not because we can com- 
prehend his being, perfections, creation, and 
providence: could we fully comprehend God, 
he would cease to be what he is. The igno- 
rant among men cannot comprehend the 
understanding of the wise among their own 
species, much less the perfections of a God. 
Nevertheless, in our ratiocination upon the 
works and harmony of Nature, we are obliged 
to acknowledge, though, at the same time, it 
is mysterious to us, that there must be such a 
Being, as a self-existent and independent 



32 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

one, the eternal cause of all things. Thus 
we believe in God, though we cannot com- 
prehend how, why, or wherefore it was pos- 
sible for him to be; and as creation was 
the exertion of such an incomprehensible 
and perfect Being, it must of necessary 
consequence be in a great measure myste- 
rious to us. 

None will dispute the reality of creation, 
inasmuch as none can be blind to the evidence 
which ascertains it. This being admitted, it 
necessarily follows that it was either eternal, 
or in time; as there can be no third way, or 
means between these two; for that which is 
not eternal, must have had a beginning, which 
is the same as an existence in time. 

AVith respect to us, we cannot effect or do 
any thing but in time; we have a dependent 
existence, and after a series of succeeding parts 
of time we arrive at a capacity of manhood, 
and every action of our lives is performed in 
the order of time; and as one part of time 
succeeds another, so our actions succeed each 
other, and every of our individual actions are 
progressive in themselves, simply considered, 
and are measured by time, whose fleeting mo- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 33 

ments pass swiftly on towards their never end- 
ing stage, eternit}^. But when we speak of 
the act, exertion, or creation of God, we should 
conceive of them, as not being confined or 
limited to the order of time, or successively 
connected with its fleeting moments, like ours ; 
for such conceptions circumscribe and limit 
the power of God, and are ideally subversive 
of his eternity, infinity, and absolute perfec- 
tion, subjecting him to a capacity or condition, 
which is manifestly finite. 

Immensity being replete with creation, the 
omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, eternal, 
and infinite exertion of God in creation, is in- 
comprehensible to the understanding of man, 
and will eternally remain the prerogative of 
infinite penetration, sagacity, and uncreated 
intelligence. 



D 



34 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 



Of the Infinitude and Eternity of Provi- 
dence, in the Creation and Formation of 
finite Beings. 

Admitting the eternity and infinity of 
Cod, the eternity and infinity of creation 
and providence in the eternal mind seem to 
follow of consequence, as there could be no 
providence or government before there were 
creatures to govern or provide for; so that we 
must admit, that creatures were eternally con- 
templated, and consequently created when the 
Almighty willed it so, or eternally formed, or 
both. The eternal existence or succession of 
finite beings, in the preceding eternity, is as 
reconcileable to the attributes, perfection, and 
providence of God, as that they should be 
immortal, or capable of a subsequent eternal 
duration, which we believe with respect to the 
souls of mankind. Nor is the eternal con tern- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 35 

plation, creation, or eternal formation, and 
consequently an eternal existence or succession 
of finite beings, as they may respect the an- 
tecedent eternity, at all more contradictory or 
impossible with God, than the immortality of 
the human soul, or the eternal perpetuation 
or succession of finite beings, as they may re- 
spect the subsequent eternity; inasmuch as 
self-existent, eternal, and infinite perfection is 
eternally the same, and may and must have 
been equally exerted eternally; referring to 
one entire eternity, without beginning or end : 
if this can be doubted, is it possible to con- 
ceive that God ever existed without a creation? 
that he existed in a complete vacuum ? The 
eternal creation and providence of God is the 
necessary result of his eternal existence and 
activity; for, as certain as there is a God, lie 
is eternally and infinitely perfect and com- 
plete, whatever our ignorant apprehensions 
and reasonings on this divine subject may be. 
An eternal series or succession in Nature is 
as reconcileable to our understandings, as the 
eternal existence of Nature, or the eternal ex- 
istence of a God; so that we may as well 
dispute against any eternal existence what- 

d 2 



36 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ever, as against an eternal succession ; for if 
one may be, the other is possible, whether we 
can comprehend them or not. The manner 
of these infinite calculations is to us incom- 
prehensible, but not contradictory, for we 
cannot understand that to be a contradiction, 
which is to us incomprehensible. 

Finally, as there could be no God without 
a Providence, and no Providence without in- 
telligent beings, on whom only it could be ex- 
ercised ; therefore, inasmuch as there is a God, 
jfinite intelligences may, and I think must, have 
been interspersed through the creation and pro- 
vidence of God co-eternal with his existence. 
But as to premised successive creation, or a 
progressive one, consisting of local parts, which, 
collectively considered, would make but a local 
whole, it could not be of the creation and 
providence of God; for this reason, that by 
our mathematical calculations we could com- 
prise it, and therefore it could be but finite, 
which would be infinitely inadequate to the 
providence of an absolutely perfect and in- 
finite Being. 



THE RELIGIOX OF PHILOSOPHY. 3? 



J»tttt£it3. 

Of the Eternity and Infinity of Divine 

Providence. 

When we consider our solar system; the 
planets attracted by their fiery centre, and mov- 
ing in their several orbits, with regular, majestic, 
and periodical revolutions ; we are charmed at 
the prospect and contemplation of those worlds 
of motion, and adore the wisdom and the 
power by which they are attracted, and their 
velocity regulated and perpetuated. And when 
we rerlect that the blessings of lite are derived 
from and dependent on the properties, quali- 
ties, constructions, proportions, and move- 
ments of that stupendous machine, we grate- 
fully acknowledge the divine beneficence. 
Vrhen we extend our thoughts (through our 
external sensations) to the vast regions of the 
starry heavens, we are lost in the immensity 
of God's works : some stars appear fair and 



38 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

luminous, and others scarcely discernible to 
the eye ; which by the help of glasses make 
a brilliant appearance, bringing the knowledge 
of others far remote within the verge of our 
feeble discoveries, which merely by the eye 
could not have been discerned or distinguish- 
ed. These discoveries of the works of God, 
naturally prompt the inquisitive mind to con- 
clude that the author of this astonishing part 
of creation, which is displayed to our view, 
has still extended his creation; so that if it 
were possible, that any of us could be trans- 
ported to the farthest extended star, which is 
perceptible to us here, we should from thence 
survey worlds as distant from that, as that is 
from this, and so on ad infinitum. 

Furthermore, it is altogether reasonable to 
conclude, that the heavenly bodies, otherwise 
worlds, which move or are situate within the 
circle of our knowledge, as well as all others 
throughout immensity, are all of them inhabit- 
ed by intelligent agents ; however different their 
sensations or manner of receiving or commu- 
nicating their ideas may be from ours, or how- 
ever different from one another. For why 
would it not have been as wise or as consis- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 39 

tent with the perfections which we adore in 
God, to have neglected giving being to intelli- 
gences in this world, as in those other worlds, in- 
terspersed with ether of various qualities in his 
immense creation ; and inasmuch as this world 
is thus replenished, we may with the highest 
rational certainty infer, that as G od has given 
us to rejoice and adore him for our being, he 
has acted consistent with his goodness, in the 
display of his providence throughout the uni- 
versality of worlds. 

To suppose that God Almighty had con- 
fined his goodness to this world, to the exclu- 
sion of all others, is similar to the idle fancies 
of some individuals in this world, that they 
and those of their communion or faith, are the 
favorites of heaven exclusively: but these are 
narrow and bigotted conceptions, which are 
degrading to a rational nature, and utterly 
unworthy of God, of whom we should form 
the most exalted ideas. Neither could there 
be any display of goodness, or of any of the 
moral perfections of God, merely in repleting 
immensity w T ith a stupid creation of elements, 
or sluggish, senseless, incogitative matter, 
which by Nature may be supposed to be in- 
capable of sensation, reflection, and enjoy- 



40 THE RELIGION OP PHILOSOPHY. 

ment: undoubtedly elements and material 
composition were designed by God to subserve 
rational beings, by constituting or supporting 
them in their respective modes of existence, 
in this or those other numerous worlds. 

There may be, in God's boundless empire of 
Nature and Providence, as many different 
sorts of modified sensation, as there are dif- 
ferent worlds and temperatures in immensity; 
or at least sensation may more or less vary ; 
but whether sensations agree in any or many 
respects, or not, or whether they agree with 
ours, or, if in any part, how far, are matters 
unknown to us : but that there are intelligent 
orders of beings, interspersed through the cre- 
ation of God, is a matter of the highest de- 
gree of rational certainty of any thing that 
falls short of mathematical demonstration. 
For if this is the only world that is replenish- 
ed with life and reason, it includes the whole 
circumference of God's providence ; for there 
would be no display of wisdom or goodness, 
merely in governing rude elements and sense- 
less matter; nor could there be any valuable 
end proposed by such a supposed government, 
or any happiness, instruction, or subserviency 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 41 

to being in general, or any reason assigned 
why such a creation should have had the di- 
vine approbation ; and consequently we may 
be morally certain that rational beings are in- 
terspersed co-extensive with the creation of 
God. 

Although the various orders of intelligences 
throughout infinitude, differ ever so much in 
their manner of sensation, and consequently 
in their manner of communicating:; or re- 
ceiving ideas, yet reason and consciousness 
must be the same in a]l ; but not the same 
with respect to the various objects of the se- 
veral worlds, though in nature the same. For 
instance, a person born blind, cannot possibly 
have an idea of colours, though ius sensibility 
of sound and feeling may be as acute as ours; 
and since there are such a variety of modes 
of sensation in this world, how vastly numerous 
may we apprehend them to be in immensity. 
By pondering on these things, we shall soon 
feel the insufficiency of our imagination, to 
conceive the immense possibility of the variety 
of the modes of sensation, and the means of 
intercourse of cogitative beings. It may be 
objected, that a man cannot subsist in the sun; 



42 THE RELIGION Ot PHILOSOPHY. 

but does it follow from thence, that God can 
not or has not constituted a nature peculiar 
to that fiery region, and caused it to be as na- 
tural and necessary for it to suck in and 
breathe out flames of fire, as it is in us to do 
the like in air? 

Numerous are the kinds of aquatic animals, 
which can no otherwise subsist but in the 
water, in which other animals would perish, 
(amphibious ones excepted;) while others 
in a variety of forms, either swifter or 
slower, move on the surface of the earth, or 
wing the air. Of these there are sundry kinds, 
which during the season of the winter live 
without food; and many of the insect tribe, 
which are really possessed of animal life, re- 
main frozen, till they are let loose by the 
kind influence of the sun, when they again 
assume their wonted animal life ; and if ani- 
mal life may differ so much in the same world, 
what inconceivable variety may be possible in 
worlds innumerable, as applicable to mental, 
cogitative, and organized beings? Certain it 
is, that any supposed obstructions concerning 
the quality or temperature of any or all of 
those worlds, could not have been any bar in 



THE RELIGION OP PHILOSOPHY. 43 

the way of God Almighty, with regard to his* 
replenishing his universal creation with moral 
agents. The unlimited perfection of God, 
could perfectly well adapt every part of his 
creation to the designs of whatever rank or 
species of constituted beings, his godlike wis- 
dom and goodness saw fit to impart existence 
to; so that, as there is no deficiency of abso- 
lute perfection in God, it is rationally demon- 
strative that the immense creation is replenish- 
ed with rational agents, and that it has been 
eternally so, and that the display of divine 
goodness must have been as perfect and com- 
plete in the antecedent, as it is possible to be 
in the subsequent eternity. * 

AVhen we pursue the study of Nature deep- 
ly, we are certain to be lost in the immen- 
sity of the works and wisdom of God : w r e 
may nevertheless in a variety of things discern 
their fitness, happy tendency, and sustaining 
quality in respect to us ; from all which, as ra- 
tional and contemplative beings, we are 
prompted to infer, that God is universally un - 
form and consistent in his infinitude of creation 
and providence, although we cannot compre- 
hend all that consistency, by reason of infir- 
mity; yet we are morally sure, that of all pos- 



44 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

sible plans, infinite wisdom must have eter- 
nally adopted the best, and infinite good- 
ness have approved it, and infinite power have 
perfected it. And as the good of being in ge- 
neral, must have been the ultimate end of God 
in his creation and government of his creatures, 
his omniscience could not fail to have it always 
present in his view. Universal Nature must 
therefore be ultimately attracted to this single 
point, and infinite perfection must have eter- 
nally displayed itself in creation and provi- 
dence. From hence we may infer, that God 
is. as eternal and infinite in his goodness, as 
his self-existent and perfect Nature is omni- 
potently great. 



UtiBlt 4. 



The Providence of God does not interfere 
with the Agency of Man, 

Mankind are more or less apt to confound 
their ideas of Divine Providence, w T ith the ac- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 45 

tions or agency of man, which ought to be 
considered distinctly, inasmuch as they are 
not one and the same; the former is the 
agency of God, by the intervention of the ope- 
rations of Nature, and the latter the agency 
of man. The Providence of God supports the 
universe, and enables rational agents to act in 
certain limited spheres, with a derived freedom, 
for otherwise it could not be the agency of 
man, but of God. So likewise in our notions 
of the infinity of God, we ought to make a 
distinction between the essence and his crea- 
tion. The infinity of the Divine Nature does 
not include all things, though it includes all 
possible perfection; if it included all things, 
it would include all imperfections also, which 
is inadmissible, nor does the Providence of 
God include all manner of actions or agencies ; 
it does not include the actions of free and ac- 
countable agents, for that they are more or less 
imperfect and sinful, thoughhis Providence sus- 
tains their power of agency ; for God cannot 
controul the actions of free beings, since, if 
he did, it would be a contradiction to their 
being free. Necessity and freedom are, in the 
diversity of their natures, diametrically oppos- 



46 THE RELIGIOX OF PHILOSOPHY. 

•ed to each other; for which reason we cannot 
in truth be said to act necessarily and freely 
in the same actions at the same time, any 
more than we can exist and not exist at 
the same time ; nor is it possible for omnipo- 
tence itself to effect these or such like contra- 
dictions, as they are attended with impossibi- 
lities in their own nature. 

All matter which we have any conception 
of, is governed by the Almighty influence of 
fate, in its various and extensive operations, 
^nd well it is that it is thus regulated and made 
subservient to rational nature. The natural 
palpitation of the heart, the beating of the 
pulse, and gravitation of our bodies, with the 
other laws of our animal nature, are as me- 
chanical as the movements of our solar system ; 
every thing therefore in the universe is subject 
to the laws of fate, except the actions or ex- 
ertions of moral beings only, which are by na- 
ture free, and which by intuition we know to 
be so, without argumentative demonstration 
to prove it, the knowledge of it being essential 
to all intelligent natures ; and all the difficult 
ties which have been started against its re- 
ality have been owing to the weakness ojf 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 47 

our reasonings. It is in consequence of this 
intuitive uncertainty, that we are free, that 
our consciences acquit or condemn us in all 
our actions and deportment of life ; and from 
this consciousness of liberty result all our men- 
tal happiness and misery, praise and blame; 
and from which we deduce all our notions of vir- 
tue and vice, and of accountability. But when 
we essay to investigate the liberty of the will, 
or the intrinsic nature of freedom, or wherein 
it consists, we are apt to be more or less con- 
founded or embarrassed with the laws of fate, 
with which we are closely surrounded; and, for 
want of skill to distinguish liberty from com- 
pulsion, involve it (in our mistaken notions) 
with the operations of those mechanical laws ; 
and so finally draw irregular inferences against 
the reality of it; concluding that mind as well 
as matter is under the compulsive influence 
of fate ; though at the same time, such a con- 
clusion is diametrically opposite to our intui- 
tive certainty of the contrary. And after all, 
we cannot but feel ourselves guilty, or not 
guilty, according to the prescriptions of our 
own consciences, and are mentally happy or 
miserable on the presumption of our intuitive 



4& THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

knowledge of the freedom of our agency, 
which never fails to frustrate all our unphilo- 
sophical theory which militates against it. For 
the consciousness of liberty, with which our un- 
derstandings are impressed by intuition, is natu- 
ral and true, and will have its effects on 
our consciences, in spite of our theoretical 
speculations of the destiny of our actions. The 
freedom of our actions, from which virtue and 
vice became possible in the nature of man, was 
implanted in our minds coeval with the ex- 
ercise of reason, or the knowledge of moral 
good and evil ; and though our reasonings on 
this important subject may be too much tinc- 
tured with the fatality of things about us, 
and our conclusions be more or less faultv and 
erroneous, yet our intuition of the reality of 
our liberty cannot be a deception, for it is 
the invariable voice of all rational nature, that 
must have had the sanction of divinity, intui- 
tively promulgated to rational nature univer- 
sally, which lays the foundation of free-agency, 
and consequently of accountability, at the 
supreme bar of God, or the vicegerency of 
our own consciences; for it is extremely 
absurd to common sense, to suppose that 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 49 

necessary beings should be commended or dis- 
commended, punished or rewarded, for their 
destined or passive actions. Had it been, in 
the nature of things, possible for God to have 
made probationary moral agents act necessarily, 
undoubtedly they would have been restrained 
from wickedness, and mechanically moved to 
the practice of that which we now call virtue, 
(though it would lose its nature if subjected 
to the laws of fate,) and they would have been 
made mechanically happy, which would have 
prevented the confusions and disorders of 
the moral world, and the miseries which have 
ensued in consequence thereof; but it was in 
the nature of things impossible, for God to 
have constituted a probationary rational na- 
ture exclusive of liberty ; which essentially and 
necessarily results from such a nature, and is 
congenial with it, so that the one cannot exist 
without the other; in consequence whereof 
moral evil became possible, and found its way 
into this world, merely through the vicious 
agency of man, which could not have been, 
if God had not permitted man to be a free 
agent 

E 



50 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

The essence of thinking beings, and their 
manner of acting, is essentially distinct from 
all and every part of the universe besides, and 
every simile or comparison which we draw from 
other beings serves only to confound or per- 
plex a just arrangement of ideas of our exalt- 
ed intelligent nature, and the superlative man- 
ner of its exertions or operations, which we 
depreciate by deducing its character of nature 
or action, from matter, figure, and motion, 
with their various modifications, either ani- 
mate or inanimate ; though it is very natural 
to represent the liberty of the mind by exter- 
nal analogies. An American Indian, being 
asked by one of the missionaries for propagat- 
ing the gospel, what his soul was, gave for 
answer, " It is my think/' This was both 
laconic and pertinent ; and with respect to our 
liberty, it is impossible for us to obtain a 
greater certainty that we are free agents, than 
that which we naturally derive from the con- 
sciousness of it. So that the greatest philoso- 
pher, and the humble and unlearned peasant, 
together with the savage in the wilderness, are 
in this respect on a level, and equal in the eye 
of an impartial God, being each of them con- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 51 

scious that he is free : and from this senti- 
ment it is, that we blame ourselves and our 
species, when we or they depart from the con- 
duct of reason. 



e 2 



52 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 



CHAPTER III. 



Jbfttioit !• 

The Doctrine of the infinite Evil of Sin 

confuted. 



hat God is infinitely good in the eternal 
displays of his providence, must be admitted 
by all, from which it is right to infer that there 
cannot be an infinite evil in the universe, in- 
asmuch as it would be incompatible with in- 
finite good; yet there are many, who imbibe 
the doctrine of the infinite evil of sin ; and the 
propositions on which they found their argu- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 53 

ments in its support, are, that the greatness of 
sin, or adequateness of its punishment, is not to 
be measured, or its viciousness ascertained, by 
the capacity and circumstances of the offend- 
er, but by the capacity and dignity of the 
being against whom the offence is committed : 
then every transgression being against the 
authority and law of God, is therefore 
against God; and as God is infinite, sin is 
an infinite evil; hence they infer the infi- 
nite and vindictive wrath of God against sin- 
ners, and his justice in deeming them, as 
some say, to infinite, and as others say, to 
eternal misery; the one without degree or 
measure, and the other without end of du- 
ration. 

Now, if we were to admit, that the 
transgressions or sins of mankind are to be 
estimated, as to their heinousness, by the 
dignity and infinity of the divine nature, it 
would follow, that all sins are equal, which 
would confound all our notions of the degrees 
or aggravations of sins ; so that the sin w« add 
be the same to kill my neighbour, as it would 
be to kill his horse. For the divine nature, by 
this proposition, being the rule by^ which mail's 



54 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY, 

sin is to be estimated, and, being always the 
same, there could be no degrees in sin or 
guilt, any more than there are degrees of per- 
fection in God, whom we all admit to be in- 
finite, and who for that very reason cannot 
admit of any degrees of amplification. There- 
fore, as certain as there are degrees in sin, the 
infinity of the divine nature cannot be the 
standard whereby it is to be ascertained ; 
which single consideration is a sufficient con- 
futation of the doctrine of the infinite evil of 
sin, as predicated on that proposition; inas- 
much as none are so stupid as not to discern 
that there are degrees and aggravations in sin. 
Though there is one and but one infinite 
good, which is God, and there can be no dis- 
pute, but that God judges and approves or 
disapproves of all things and beings, and 
agencies of beings, as in truth they are, or, in 
other words, judges of every thing, as being 
what it is ; but to judge a finite evil to be in- 
finite, would be infinitely erroneous and dis- 
proportionate; for so certain as there is a dis- 
tinction between infinity and finitude, so cer- 
tain finite sinful agency cannot be infinitely 
evil, or, in other words, finite offences cannot 
be infinite. 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 55 

We will therefore dismiss the doctrine of 
the infinite evil of sin with this observation, 
that as no mere creature can suffer an infini- 
tude of misery or punishment, it is therefore 
incompatible with the wisdom of God, so far 
to capacitate creatures to sin, as, in his con- 
stitution of things, to preclude himself from 
adequately punishing them. But, though 
we may rationally presume so much, it would 
be in the highest degree presumptuous for 
finite capacities to say what degree of punish- 
ment will be inflicted on the wicked — it is not 
given to man to know — but we may reasona- 
bly conclude, that the punishment will be 
adequate to the offence, and will effect the ul- 
timate purposes of God's providence. 



56 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 



The Moral Government of God incompati- 
ble with eternal Punishment. 

Having considered the doctrine of the in- 
finite evil of sin, we proceed to the consider- 
ation of that of eternal damnation. 

Mankind in general seem to be evidently 
impressed with a sense and strong expectation 
of judgment to come, after life is ended; 
wherein the disorders, injustice, and wicked- 
ness, which have been acted by rational agents, 
shall be fully and righteously adjusted, and 
the delinquents punished; and that such' who 
obey the laws of reason, or moral rectitude, 
and the precepts of their Divine Monitor, their 
conscience, may be rewarded according to their 
works : this impression is so general with all de- 
nominations and sectaries of men, that it is ra- 
ther the intuition of nature, than the effect of 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 57 

mere tradition. It is nevertheless to be consi- 
dered, that the doctrine of accountability and 
judgment to come has not gone so far as to de- 
termine, whether the incorrigible sinner, from 
the close of human life, shall be everlastingly 
debarred from reformation and repentance, 
and precluded from the favor of God or not; 
but having taught a righteous and just judg- 
ment, has left it as the prerogative of God to 
proportion the rewards of the virtuous, and the 
punishments of the wicked, with their respec- 
tive durations, which we find by reason can- 
not be eternal, and consequently must be tem- 
porary : in what degrees, manner, or pro- 
portions of intenseness or of duration, we can- 
not comprehend, but must wait the decision 
of the righteous Judge, whose omniscience 
takes cognizance of the thoughts, designs, and 
actions of his creatures; and whose impartial 
justice will hold the balance, and extend in- 
terchangeable happiness or misery to them, 
according to their respective merits or demerits, 
or the virtues or vices of their minds, in cer- 
tain temporary periods co-extensive with our 
immortality; and though the judgments of 
God may be much more severe and terrible 



58 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to incorrigible sinners beyond the grave, than 
such as can be inflicted or conceived in 
this life; yet we may, by reasoning from the 
wisdom and goodness of God, and the nature 
and capacity of the human mind, determine, 
that its happiness or misery cannot be per- 
petual and eternal. 

Accountability, probation, or trial, are in 
nature inseparably connected with the existence 
of moral beings, and must eternally remain so 
to be, for weakness and imperfection is that 
which subjects all finite rational beings to trial, 
and is the only ground of the possibility of it. 
All intelligent agents, therefore, except the 
most high God, are probationers. Could God 
have established any creature or race of crea- 
tures, in a confirmed and perpetual happiness, 
by a sovereign act of omnipotence, consistent 
with his moral perfections, and the nature of 
intelligent agents themselves, we should have 
experienced such a confirmation in this life. 
But a confirmed and perpetual state of bless- 
edness will agree to no character short of God's. 
This is his prerogative, and it is the abso- 
lute perfection of his nature, which confirms 
him in that state ; how prophanely arrogant. 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 59 

then, in man, to pretend to the same, as aris- 
ing from the utmost extent of his short proba- 
tionary perfection in this life. 

Moral good is the only source from whence 
a rational mind can be supplied with a hap- 
piness agreeable to the dignity of its nature. 
It would be impossible for omnipotence itself 
to make a vicious mind taste the ecstatic feli- 
city of a moral happiness, so long as it may 
be supposed to be vicious; inasmuch as mora- 
lity, in the nature of the thing itself, is pre-re- 
quisite to such a happiness, without the pos- 
session and actual enjoyment of which the 
mind cannot be mentally happy, or enjoy it- 
self agreeably to its discerning, conscious, and 
sentimental nature; but must disapprove of 
its vicious pursuits, or departure from the ami- 
able rules of moral fitness, and feel proporti- 
onably guilty and miserable ; for miserable the 
mind must be, until its bias and disposition is 
turned from moral evil to moral good, which 
is the same as repentance and restoration. 
This is the eternal law of nature, respecting 
the agency and the happiness or misery 
of imperfect rational nature throughout its 
never ending agency and trial; and conse- 



60 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

quently, our eternity will most probably be 
as much diversified with happiness and misery, 
as our agency may be supposed to alternately 
partake of moral good and evil. 

It has been owing to improvement in learning 
that we have progressively advanced from the 
knowledge and capacity of childhood to that of 
manhood, and to our improvement in moral 
good and evil, that has alternately made us 
happy or unhappy in a mental sense ; from 
hence we infer, that if rational nature, in the 
world to come, is essentially analogous to 
what it is in this life, agency and probation 
will be continued with the immortality of the 
soul, be the manner of its existence, or of its 
receiving or communicating ideas what it will. 

Furthermore, the doctrine of a future im- 
provement or agency, may be argued from the 
death of infants and children. None will pre- 
tend that they have an opportunity of profici- 
ency in this life; therefore we may infer, that 
if such a state be requisite to fit and improve 
their feeble minds for the enjoyment of a ra- 
tional happiness, agency must be continued 
to the future state ; and, admitting that they 
are immortal, and that agency is precluded 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 6± 

from the world to come, they would remain 
children in knowledge eternally; nor could 
any departed soul, on such a position, expand 
its rational functions beyond its size of under- 
standing at the time of departing this life, 
which would make immortality to man a cy- 
pher, except as to the perpetuation of their 
powers of cogitation in a limited circum- 
ference; the reflection whereof would be more 
or less rude and incoherent, which at best 
would be but a small fund for an eternal con- 
templation. 

But if it be admitted that the souls of man- 
kind, of every age and denomination, will in 
their futurity be progressive in knowledge, 
(which must be the case with cogitative 
beings) then it necessarily follows, that agency 
and trial proceed hand in hand with it in im- 
mediate succession, therefore it seems impos- 
sible that there should be a particular day of 
judgment, in which mankind, or any, or ei- 
ther of them, shall receive their eternal sen- 
tence of happiness or misery; for such a sen- 
tence is inconsistent with any further trial 
or agency, and therefore appears inadmissible. 

A proficiency in knowledge and virtue in 



62 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

this life, will most assuredly be our best pass- 
port for the higher degrees of happiness, which 
God in his infinite justice and goodness may 
assign to us in the world to come : a consider- 
ation this, which ought to excite in our minds 
a constant exercise of our free agency, to im- 
prove in knowledge and virtue, under a full 
and confident hope, that on the completion 
of this our earthly probationary existence, we 
may receive the sentence, which Christ told 
to his disciples would be pronounced upon 
the just, of " Well done, thou good and faith- 
ful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few 
things, I will make thee lord over many." A 
sentence, the essence of which is so very pro- 
bable, that had it been handed down to us 
from any other less respectable authority, it 
would still have carried conviction with it. 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 63 



Jbtctton 3. 

Human Liberty, Agency, and Accounta* 
bility, cannot be attended with Eternal 
Consequences, either good or bad. 

From what has been argued, it appears, 
that mankind, in this life, are not agents of 
trial for eternity, but that they will eternally 
remain agents of trial. To suppose that our 
eternal circumstances will be unalterably fixed 
in happiness or misery, in consequence of the 
agency or transactions of this temporary life, 
is inconsistent with the moral government of 
God, and the progressive and retrospec- 
tive knowledge of the human mind. God has 
not put it in our power to plunge ourselves 
into eternal woe and perdition from so limit- 
ed a probation : human liberty is not so exten- 
sive, for the term of human life bears no pro- 
portion to the eternity succeeding it, so that 



64 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

there could be no proportion between a momen- 
tary agency, or probation, and any supposed 
eternal consequences of happiness or misery re- 
sulting from it. Our liberty consists in our 
power of agency, and cannot fall short of, or 
exceed it; for liberty is agency itself, oris that 
by which agency or action is exerted; there- 
fore, as our agency does not extend to conse- 
quences of eternal happiness or misery, the 
power of that agency, which is liberty, does 
not. Sufficient it is for virtuous minds, while 
in this life, that they keep " Consciences void 
of offence towards God and towards man:" 
and that, in their commencement in the suc- 
ceeding state, they have a retrospective know- 
ledge of their agency in this, and retain a con- 
sciousness of a well-spent life. Beings thus 
possessed of a habit of virtue, would enjoy a 
rational felicity beyond the reach of physical 
evils, which terminate with life; and in all ra- 
tional probability, would be advanced in the 
order of nature to a more exalted and sublime 
manner of being, knowledge, and action, than 
at present we can conceive, where no joys 
or pains can approach, but of the mental 
kind ; in which elevated state virtuous minds 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 65 

will be able in a clearer and more copious 
manner than in this life, to contemplate the 
superlative beauties of moral fitness ; and with 
ecstatic satisfaction enjoy it, notwithstanding 
imperfection, and consequently agency, pro- 
ficiency, and trial, of some kind or other, must 
everlastingly continue with finite minds ; and 
if the fallen state of angels is to be credited, 
how can this argument be doubted? 

As to the vicious who have violated the 
laws of reason and morality, who have lived 
a life of sin and wickedness, and are at as 
great a remove from rational happiness, as 
from moral rectitude, such incorrigible sin- 
ners, at their commencing existence in the 
world of spirits, will undoubtedly have opened 
to them and will experience a most tremendous 
scene of horror, self-condemnation, and guilt, 
with anguish of mind; the more so, as no 
sensual delights can there (as in tins world) 
divert the mind from its conscious guilt; the 
clear sense of which will be the more pungent, 
as the mind in that state will be greatly en- 
larged, and consequently more capaciously 
susceptible uf sorrow, grief, and conscious woe, 
from a retrospective reflection of a wicked life ; 

F 



66 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 



yet we may reasonably hope and believe that 
through the wisdom of the divine government, 
which is goodness, they may in some limited 
period of duration have a contrition for, and 
detestation of, sin and vanity, the procuring 
cause of their punishment, and be reclaimed 
from viciousness, and restored to virtue and 
happiness ; still, however, liable to transgres- 
sion and future misery in consequence of an 
imperfect nature, eternally subject to agency 
and trial, and consequently to alternate hap- 
. piness and misery, which must be the case 
with all intelligent probationary beings, But 
after all our researches, the insufficiency of the 
human understanding, to discover the economy 
of the divine government over the moral world, 
is so great, that we can determine but very 
little about the manner of its rewards and 
punishments, or of the extent of them; except 
that they cannot be perpetual or eternal, but 
will be as temporary and interchangeable, as 
the vice and virtue of moral agents, otherwise 
the punishment of the fallen angels must be 
fabulous. Nevertheless, from the arguments 
deduced from the wisdom and goodness of 
God in his creation and providence, we may 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 6? 

with rational certainty conclude, that moral 
goodness and happiness will ultimately be vic- 
torious over sin and misery, which undoubt- 
edly will be more conspicuously so in the fu- 
ture stages of our immortality; so that there 
will be a far greater plenitude of the former 
than of the latter, to which the latter is finally 
made subservient; for otherwise, we could 
not account for the wisdom and goodness of 
God in his creation, providence, or moral 
government. 

The endless disproportion between the co- 
gitations and the agency of the human mind, 
in this momentary life, may, with great pro- 
priety, be urged against an everlasting fixed- 
ness of the condition of happiness or misery, 
after this life is ended, merely in consequence 
of the agency of this. Our conceptions them- 
selves are progressive; we think by succession, 
and our ideas, in their operations, are nume- 
rical, and by nature subject to number; each 
individual idea has its circumscription, and 
the whole collectively considered, would make 
but a limited knowledge; the more incon- 
siderably so, as it is most probable, that not 
one hundredth part of our reflections from in- 



68 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

fancy to old age, is worthy to be denominat- 
ed knowledge, by reason of their fictitious and 
incoherent rudeness; so that when we con- 
template the endlessness of eternity, our 
cogitations are lost in its infinitude ; for neither 
numbers, quantity, admeasurement, nor any 
possible motion or comparison of cogitations, 
or of things, can possibly co-extend with it; 
and consequently human liberty, agency, 
and accountability, in their progressive exer- 
tions, can bear no manner of proportion or 
connection with an eternity of rewards or 
punishments; for the nature of our liberty, 
agency, and accountability, is but finite, and 
therefore can no other wise operate than by suc- 
cession, and cannot be attended with eternal 
consequences, any more than succession itself 
can comprise eternity. With a well ground- 
ed judgment therefore we may determine, that 
neither the virtues nor vices of human life can 
be attended with eternal consequences of good 
and evil; inasmuch as such endless conse- 
quences necessarily imply an endless dispro- 
portion between them and human agency: 
but the truth of the matter is, our liberty, and 
therefore our accountability, cannot exceed the 



THE RELIGION OE PIIILOSOPU Y. 69 

limits of our cogitations and knowledge; this 
is the circumference in which our liberty can 
exercise itself, and this is the boundary of its 
agency; and although eternal probation is ne- 
cessarily connected with the eternal existence 
of finite minds, yet the merits or demerits of 
an everlasting probation, has its various ope- 
rations for ever on the mind, existing in the 
conscience, and causing it to be alternately 
happy or miserable, in such proportions and 
periods as nonconformity to moral rectitude, 
in our eternal probation, will admit. 

The policy of human governments has de- 
manded that corporal punishments should be 
inflicted on the violaters of their laws, to wit, 
the whip, the halter, the gibbet, and the like. 
So far as human punishments extend not to 
the depriving of that life which human power 
cannot restore, and which belongs to God 
alone to take in his own good time ; so far, I 
acquiesce in the policy, no farther. From these 
and from the ideas of physical evils, which are 
common to us in this life, it seems, that most 
of mankind form to themselves an arrange- 
ment of ideas of the manner of God's punish- 
ing incorrigible sinners in the world to come. 



70 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY, 

The idea of fire and brimstone is, in this part 
of the world, their main apprehension, to 
which, they unite the evils of a guilty con- 
science, inasmuch as mental as well as physi- 
cal evils, with their divers modes of sufferings, 
are common to them in this life ; but it should 
be considered that death puts a final end to 
physical evils; unless our mortal bodies are 
to be raised and reunited to their respec- 
tive souls; which, if admitted, they must un- 
avoidably suffer death a second time, and such 
as may be supposed to be cast into hell-fire, 
would suffer a second dissolution instantly, 
unless their resurrection bodies are supposed to 
be of the salamander kind, and then they would 
not be the same bodies. Thus a physical suf- 
fering, instead of being eternal, would be but 
for a moment, or at most but temporary; and 
if we suppose those resurrection bodies will 
be able to endure fire, it must be likewise sup- 
posed, that it would be their proper element, 
and consequently that they would be as well 
suited to such a fiery element, as our earthly 
bodies are to the elements we now enjoy and 
exist in. 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 71 



Rectum 4. 

Of Physical Evils. 

Physical evils are in nature inseparable 
from animal life, they commenced existence 
with it, and are its concomitants through life; 
so that the same Nature which gives being to 
the one, gives birth to the other also; the one 
is not before or after the other, but they are co- 
existent together, and co-temporaries; and as 
they began existence in a necessary depen- 
dence on each other, so they terminate together 
in death and dissolution. This is the original 
order to which animal nature is subjected, as 
applied to every species of it: the beasts of 
the field, the fowls of the air, the fish of the 
sea, with reptiles, and all manner of beings, 
•which are possessed of animal life ; nor is pain, 
sickness, or mortality any part of God's 



72 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY, 

punishment for sin, for all animated nature, 
rational or irrational, in this world, are equally 
subject to these physical evils. On the other 
hand, sensual happiness is no part of the re- 
ward of virtue; to reward moral actions with 
Avhat are deemed the good things of this world, 
such as a plenty of wine, and a haunch of 
venison, compared to the bare sustenance of 
others, would be as inadequate, as to measure 
a triangle with sound ; for virtue and vice per- 
tain to the mind, and their merits or demerits 
have their just effects on the conscience, as 
has been before evinced : but animal gratifi- 
cations are common to the human race indis- 
criminately, and also to the beasts of the field; 
and physical evils as promiscuously and uni- 
versally -extend to the whole, so that "there 
is no knowing good or evil by all that is before 
us, for all is vanity." It was not among the 
number of possibles, that animal life should 
be exempted from mortality ; omnipotence it- 
self could not have made it capable of eterna- 
lization and indissolubility, for the self-same 
Nature which constitutes animal life, subjects 
it to decay and dissolution, so that the one- 
cannot be without the other, any more than 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 73 

there could be a compact number of moun- 
tains without vallies, or that I could exist and 
not exist at the same time; or that God could 
effect any other contradiction in nature, all 
contradictions being equally impossible, inas- 
much as they imply an absolute incompati- 
bility with nature and truth, for nature is 
founded on truth, and the same truth which 
constitutes mountains makes the vallies at 
the same time; nor is it possible that they 
could have a separate existence. The same 
truth which affirms my existence, denies its 
negative; so also the same law of nature, which 
in truth produceth an animal life, and sup- 
ports it for a season, wears it out, and in its 
natural course reduces it to its original ele- 
ments again. The vegetable world also pre- 
sents us with a constant aspect of productions 
and dissolutions, and the bustle of elements 
is beyond all conception; but the dissolution 
of forms is not the dissolution of matter, or 
the annihilation of it, or of the creation, which 
exists in all possible forms and fluxilities ; and 
it is from such physical alterations of the parti- 
cles of matter, that animal and vegetable life are 
produced and destroyed; elements afford them 



74 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

nutrition, and time brings them to maturity, 
decay, and dissolution; and in all the prolific 
production of animal life, or the productions 
of those of a vegetable nature, throughout all, 
their growth, decay, and dissolution, make no 
addition or diminution of creation; but eter- 
nal Nature continues its never ceasing opera- 
tions, (though in most respects mysterious to 
vis,) under the unerring guidance of the Pro- 
vidence of God. 

Animal nature consists of a regular consti- 
tution of a variety of organic parts, which have 
a particular and necessary dependence on each 
other, by the mutual assistance whereof the 
whole is animated. Blood seems to be the 
source of life, and it is requisite that it have a 
proper circulation from the heart to the extreme 
parts of the body, and from thence to the 
heart again, that it may repeat its temporary 
rounds through certain arteries and veins, 
which replenish every minute part with blood 
and vital heat; but the brain is evidently the 
seat of sensation, w T hich through the nervous 
system conveys the animal spirits to every 
part of the body, imparting to it sensation and 
motion, constituting it a living machine, which 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 75 

could never have been produceed, or exercis- 
ed its respective functions in any other sort 
of world but this; which is in a constant 
series of fluxilities, and causeth it to produce 
food for its inhabitants. An unchangeable 
world could not admit of production or disso- 
lution, but would be identically the same, 
which would preclude the existence and nutri- 
ment of such sensitive creatures as we are. 
The nutrition extracted from food by the secret 
aptitudes of the digesting powers, demands a 
constant flux and reflux of the particles of 
matter, which are perpetually incorporating 
with the body, and supplying the place of the 
superfluous particles, that are constantly dis- 
charging themselves by insensible perspiration : 
supporting, and at the same time, in its ulti- 
mate tendency, destroying animal life. Thus 
it manifestly appears, that the laws of the 
world in which we live, and the constitution 
of the animal nature of man, are all but one 
uniform arrangement of causes and effects ; and 
as by the course of those laws, animal life is 
propagated and sustained for a season, so by 
the operation of the same laws, decay and 
mortality are the necessary consequences. 



76 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY 



CHAPTER IV. 



TREATING ON THE IMMORTALITY OF 
THE HUMAN SOUL. 



Of the Aptitudes of Sensation, and of their 
Subserviency to the Mind. 

H.AVING considered the Providence of God, 
as it respects the mortality of the body, we 
proceed to the consideration of the immor- 
tality of the soul ; and in order to a clear un- 
derstanding of this important subject, it is re- 
quisite. that we fi st speculate on the powers, 
use, and end of our external sensations, and 
point.out their particular subserviency to the 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 77 

mind; and secondly, explain the intrinsic dif- 
ference between them, whereby the latter may 
exist independent of the former; and thirdly, 
deduce arguments from the necessary attributes 
and moral perfections of God, as also from 
his creation and providence, of the moral cer- 
tainty of the soul's immortality, or natural 
eternalization. Human nature is compound- 
ed of sensation and reflection : sensation com- 
prehends the body with its five senses, viz. 
those of feeling, taste, and smelling, (the two 
latter of which are only a diversity of the 
modes of feeling,) as also the more extensive 
senses of seeing and hearing. Reflection com- 
prehends the operation of the mind, and is 
that which is commonly denominated the soul, 
with its various modes of exertion; as that 
of memory, reason, consciousness, judgment, 
determination, contrivance, invention, and the 
like, which will be particularly explained and 
illustrated in due order. 

The senses are exquisitely calculated to make 
discoveries of external objects to the mind, 
they are the medium through which the mind 
receives its first notices of things, or mere ap- 
prehension of them, without denying, or affirm- 



78 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ing any thing concerning them, and it is in, 
by, or through the instrumentality of the 
senses only, that the mind of man, in this life, 
is enabled to form any idea of external ob- 
jects, or to exert its thinking conscious nature. 
The instances of persons born deficient in 
part, as to their senses, will serve to illustrate 
the subject matter of our inquiry : those who 
are born blind, can never be taught what co- 
lours are, or what we mean by seeing; an idea 
of colours, or the knowledge of ocular percep- 
tion, is to them supernatural and impossible; 
so also respecting those who are born deaf, an 
idea of sound would to them be equally su- 
pernatural ; the most harmonious music would 
to them be as imperceptible, as nonentity is 
to us, of which they could not form any con- 
ception. This we know to be true in fact. 

The sense of feeling, with which those 
of taste and smell are connected, or from 
which they are produced, being only diverse 
modes of feeling, are essential to an animal 
body, and without which it could not be deno- 
minated animate, but inanimate; but seeing 
and hearing; are not essential to animation, as it 
is often destitute of those sensations, so that it is 
impossible in nature, that we should have an 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 79 

instance, wherein the mind can possibly be 
ignorant of the idea of feeling; it is neverthe- 
less as certain that we are beholden to the 
sense of feeling for our apprehensions of it, as 
to that of our seeing, for our apprehension of 
colours, or to our hearing for the apprehen- 
sion of sound. In consequence of palsies and 
such like disorders, our sense of feeling has 
been in part impaired. In some instances, 
human bodies on one side have been so be- 
numbed, that, on that side, they have been 
wholly incapable of feeling; such instances 
have been common in every age and country 
in the world, which, together with those other 
experiments of blindness and deafness, evinces 
the dependency of the mind on its sensorium 
while in this life. 

Whatever external object presents itself to 
the senses, gives the mind an apprehension of 
it. To enumerate the diversity and multipli- 
city of the objects of sense, would be endless, 
and also needless. The notices or apprehen- 
sion of things, which are communicated to the 
mind by the mere aptitude of sensation itself, 
abstracted from a succession of reflection, or 
thinking, are what I denominate simple ideas, 
or perhaps, may be called sensible ideas, 



80 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

which are excited by the intervention of the 
senses, between external objects and the mind, 
and are much the same helps to the mind, as 
glasses are to the senses, by assisting the na- 
tural eye to discover such object, which, with- 
out them, the eye could not perceive; and the 
mind by that means obtains an apprehension 
of such extended objects, by looking through 
two mediums, to wit, the eye and the glass; 
the eye is in this case the first medium, with- 
out which the mind could not discern the 
glass; and the glass the second medium, which 
enables the eye, and consequently the mind, 
to discover worlds in the expansion of the 
heavens, which the mind, through its first 
medium only, could not explore. It is on 
such simple sensible ideas, which the mind 
thus mediately obtains through the instrumen- 
tality of its senses, that all our proficiency 
in knowledge and science is made. There 
is not one individual apprehension or original 
simple idea but what the mind receives through 
its sensorv, so that sensation in the order of 
nature discloses the way and manner of the 
exertions of cogitative nature. Common con- 
versation, learning, business, and whatever 



THE RELIGIOX OF PHILOSOPHY. 81 

pertains to the social life is manifestly depen- 
dent on it. Those who are taught the art of 
reading and writing can hold correspondence 
with one another, though in different quarters 
of the ojobe; and bv the same means we are en- 
ablcd to maintain a correspondence of ideas with 
writers who have been long dead : twenty-four 
characters or letters, arranged according 
i / certain rules, arc capable of making such 
an impression on the sense of seeing, that, 
by that sense, the mind of those who read 
can understand the ideas of those who have 
Written intelligibly. " It is not by any 
concomitant act of ratiocination that we 
come to be apprized of the existence and 
difference of the common objects of sense; 
but we find them to be existent and dif- 
ferent in and hy the pure act of sensation 
itself; we have, in and by this act, such a re- 
presentation of things made to us, that we 
apprehend that this is not that, nor one the 
other. It is true, by reason and reflection, 
rfe come to a more complete and particular 
knowledge of the differences, but we have not 
our first apprehension of those differences 
from thence." Though reason and experience, 

g 



82 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

in a variety of instances, may correct sense; 
yet independent of it, there could have been 
no such thing as reasoning or experience 
among mankind, or any such creature as man, 
sensation being a part of his nature. There 
are many modes and customs arbitrarily intro- 
duced into learning and arts. It was neither 
sensation nor reason that pointed out any par- 
ticular shape, sound, or name, to the twenty- 
four letters ; but these were the effect of contri- 
vance and invention, which are faculties of the 
mind: nevertheless the mind must have been 
previously informed through the medium of its 
senses, of shapes and sounds in general, or 
it would not have been able to conceive, 
or to invent shapes or sounds in particular, 
which might be adapted to answer the de 
signs of communicating or receiving ideas; 
and thus it is, that sensation in all cases 
lays the foundation of the exercise of thought 
and reflection; judgment is no further con- 
cerned in such cases, than requiring the 
figure and size of the letters, and their par- 
ticular sounds, to be uniform and distinct, 
and that the characters be properly written ; 
any supposed figure or sound of letters, which 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 83 

are equally well adapted to the design of giving 
and receiving ideas, and holding intercourse 
between intelligent beings, are equally ap- 
pro vable by reason, provided they have ob- 
tained common consent and use. The same 
may be observed of the rules of spelling, and 
many other parts of learning. Language itself 
is artificial and arbitrary; for though natural 
sensation taught all nations to apprehend the 
common objects of sense alike, yet neither sen- 
sation nor reason taught any particular lan- 
guage, and consequently the nations and tribes 
of the world differ in their speech, though 
they agree in their sensible apprehensions of 
external things ; but we arbitrarily affix certain 
ideas to words or sounds, and those who are 
acquainted with and understand their con- 
nection, are linguists, and are able to corres- 
pond together. 

Words or sounds have no particular ideas 
connected with them ; it is common consent 
and use, in applying certain ideas uniform- 
ly to them, that furnish them with intel- 
ligence, some particular sounds which betoken 
distress or gladness excepted ; so that in con- 
versation, when certain sounds, which from 



G 



o 



,*" ^ 



84 THE KELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

common use have been received into any 
language, with the ideas annexed to them, 
move the subtile expanding air, making 
it vibrate on the ear, they immediately com- 
municate to the mind the intelligence which 
bj^ art is connected with such sounds: thus 
too when I feel myself hungry and faint, 
I think of food; and when thirsty, of 
drink; I smell the fragance of a rose, and my 
mind forms an idea of that flower; I hear it 
thunder, and it represents to my mind the 
complex idea of a thunder storm ; I see a 
vessel, which excites in my mind an idea of 
its figure; in fine, all sensible ideas, that ever 
have been or can be excited in the mind 
of man, have been and must be communi- 
cated by the instrumentality of the senses, 
and are distinguished from ail our other ideas 
by the manner of our perception; which is 
merely from the pure aptitude of sensation 
itself, abstractedly considered from reason- 
ing, collecting, or inferring one thing from 
another, and which is common to animal 
nature in, general, as well as to the human 
kind. Sensible ideas of themselves, considered 
abstractedly from reasoning, could not compre- 



THE RELIGIOX OP PHILOSOPHY. 85 

hend any thins; of a moral nature, nor confer 
any moral obligation; inasmuch as the know- 
ledge of moral good and evil does not result 
merely from them : both man and beast enjoy 
them promiscuously, as they are the result 
of animation, and do not pertain to the ex- 
alted essence of reason. 



The intrinsic Difference between Sensation, 
and the Principle of the Soul, and 
their distinct Functions* 

The human mind is capable of understand- 
ing; the moral fitness of things in a limited 
sense. It is capable of reasoning on sensible 
ideas, by compounding and considering them 
complexly ; it is capable of separating and 



86 THE EELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

considering them abstractedly , or complicated- 
ly, of examining into their connection, pro- 
portion, and other properties, of making ex- 
periments and essays on many things, and dis- 
covering their tendency and subserviency. Our 
moral notions of things are the result of reason- 
ing on the works of Nature, and of examining 
into the consequences of things, thereby dis- 
cerning their ultimate tendency and rational 
fitness, as it affects being in general. But 
these extended parts of scientific knowledge 
do not so readily come within the scope of our 
understanding, as the common notions of mo- 
rality, which respect society in its various re- 
lations and connections in life. It is not my 
design to enter into an explanation of these 
social duties, which are evident to mankind 
in general, but only to observe, that, though 
they are so apparent, yet the knowledge 
of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, 
with their respective consequences, are dis- 
covered by reason only, sensation being alto- 
gether inadequate to such discoveries. In- 
vention, contrivance, and arts of various kinds, 
which have contributed to the service of man- 
kind, such as the liberal arts, sciences, median- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 8? 

ism, manufactures, and the like, originate in the 
exertions of the mind. The display of these 
noble faculties evinces that there is a princi- 
ple in the nature of man, superior to any 
thing which could be the offspring of mere 
sensation. 

Whatever improvement the mind makes by 
its reflection, invention, and reasoning upon 
sensible ideas is the proficiency of intelli- 
gence; for sensation is one entire and simple 
exertion, which does not admit of improve- 
ment; but it is the mind which improves upon 
those original images. The ideas thus deduci- 
ble from those which we denominate sensible, 
are vastly more numerous than those original 
images themselves; inasmuch as they admit 
of all manner of diversification and refinement. 
The ideas of natural things are, in their several 
kinds, capable of being associated together by 
the mind, as those pertaining to music by 
themselves, and those that pertain to military 
discipline, or to any art, science, or manufac- 
tory; all of which have their respective associa- 
tions. But ideas pertaining to moral fitness, are 
in their nature incapable of association with 
mere natural ones; for instance, justice with 



88 THE RKL1GIOX OF PHILOSOPHY. 

mere sound, wisdom with mere personal beau- 
ty, a good conscience with a good coat, or 
with any unthinking or unconscious being. 
For as ideas of natural things in their re- 
spective classes, are capable of, and naturally 
associate together by reason of their natural 
fitness and utility; so ideas of moral fitness, 
naturally associate and connect together. 
When from a deduction of reasoning on the 
works of Nature, or from any particular part 
of them, we draw an inference of God's good- 
ness "to man, as by reasoning on the ultimate 
tendency of the natural world to subserve the 
moral, we deduce a moral inference from 
elementary and material things, which we 
denominate the progressive act of ratioci- 
nation; and inasmuch as in and by the pro- 
vidence of Cod, " We live, move, and have 
our being," the inferences of Divine goodness 
might be as numerous as the mind of man can 
could conceive ; yet but a very small part 
of the Divine benignity can be compre- 
hended by our finite understandings. The 
mind being thus able to deduce moral ideas 
from external things, which we denominate 
sensible ideas, is capable of compounding or 



THE RELIG10X OF PHILOSOPHY. 89 

forming a complex idea of a number of them ; 
can add to or subtract from such complex 
idea, can form propositions, make deductions 
and final consequences, and thus proceed in 
argumentation on moral as well as other 
subjects, to the extent of its capaciousness. 
Was it not for memory, which is a faculty 
of the soul, mankind must have remain- 
ed children in knowledge to this day, inas- 
much as without it they could gain nothing 
by experience, which would reduce human 
nature so low, that a man would as likely 
burn his fingers in a candle as a child, or 
would be brought to a level with the brute 
creation; as in this case, experiments could 
not be instructive, nor could we, on this 
position of the debility of memory, retain so 
much as one simple idea, but that which 
may be supposed to be in the present tense; 
what we could comprehend for the time 
being, would comprise the total of our know- 
ledge, for, without memory, it would be impos- 
sible for us to aroue and infer one thine from 
another, or to exercise reason. So also y if the 
mind had the exercise of memory, but no 
judgment, it could not drafW any consequences, 



90 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

or come to any conclusion in those things, 
which may be supposed to be retained in the 
memory ; so that to remember in such circum- 
stances as this, would be to no purpose, nor 
answer any wise or valuable end ; and suppos- 
ing the mind to have the faculty of memory 
and judgment, yet, if it had no will or power 
to put the resolutions of the judgment into 
execution or action, the mind in such a con- 
dition would be able to reflect, remember, 
reason, and judge of things, but all to no wise 
end, nor to serve any purpose of agency or 
design worthy of a rational creature, being 
under an invincible confinement and restraint, 
for want of a power to execute the decrees of 
the judgment: but experience assures us that 
we are free, and that it is through the medium 
of the senses, that the mind is furnished 
with its first notices of things, or sensi- 
ble ideas; that it is able to reflect, re- 
member, and judge of things, has a power 
of willing, or of agency, and in fact, is able to 
exert itself in a great variety of actions and 
conduct. The mind is but one entire, pure, 
or simple essence; it is the same intelligent 
principle which receives sensible ideas, and 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 91 

retains those perceptions in memory ; it is the 
same principle which reflects and reasons 
upon those ideas thus retained in itself, that 
exerts its powers of ratiocination to the extent 
of the mind's capaciousness, and which wills 
or controuls its own actions. All the different 
operations, agencies, or exertions of the mind, 
be they what they will, are only the various 
exertions of the same principle ; it is therefore 
the same soul that receives the perception of 
external objects, or sensible ideas, which reflects 
upon them, and which remembers, reasons, 
and infers one thino- from another, draws con- 
elusions, judges and exerts itself, actuates the 
body, and does every thing which belongs to 
thinking ; liberty therefore is essential to in- 
telligent beings, notwithstanding the many 
rnetaph}'sical arguments which have been ad- 
vanced to overthrow it. 

To point out the exact boundaries between 
sensation and reflection, or the precise func- 
tions of the one and of the other, and clearly 
to discern where the aptitude of sensation 
ends, and reflection begins, in the apprehen- 
sion of mere simple ideas, is curiously nice, or 
impossible, but it does not follow from hence, 



92 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

that there is no distinction between them, or, 
which is the same thing, between the body and 
the mind, any more than that there is no such 
thing as day and night, because we oftentimes 
differ in opinion concerning the discover} 7 of the 
precise dawn of daylight, or because we, more 
or less, are at a loss to prefix in our minds the 
exact moment when it becomes visible ; or 
that there is no distinction between truth and 
falsehood, because that, in intricate and per- 
plexed matters, we do not comprehend their 
respective limitations. When the dawn of 
day becomes apparent, we clearly distinguish 
the day from the night, though w T e may have 
been at a loss about the exact moment when 
it dawned; and truth and falsehood are dis- 
tinguishable by us in plain cases; so also con- 
cerning!: sensation, and the reflections or mere 
cogitations of the mind, in the production of 
sensible ideas, it may be difficult or impossible 
for us to understand the exact proportion 
which sensation and reflection in the order of 
nature, have contributed towards the pro- 
duction of those images, from which all our 
knowledge of things in general are predicated. 
We may nevertheless, for certainty, determine 



THE RELIGION OP PHILOSOPHY. 93 

that sensation is not reflection, but that they 
are essentially and intrinsically different from 
each other. It is natural for the mind to re- 
flect, reason, and philosophise upon the works 
of Nature, as it is for sensation to represent 
to the mind the first and simple perception of 
them. All sorts of ratiocination, contrivance, 
invention, and arts, are intrinsically distinct 
exertions from the aptitude of sensation, and 
pertain to a more exalted principle. 

The terraqueous globe, with its productions, 
is evidently designed by the Creator, to sub- 
serve animal life, and the body to subserve the 
soul, and in fine that all matter, variousl v endow- 
ed, was made subservient to rational beinas, 
and as sensation is the production of matter 
operating on the organs of animated beings, 
it is subjected to physical evils, which have 
already been considered. 

Sensation, abstractedly considered from a su- 
perior principle, could never have given us 
any possible apprehension of the being and 
Providence of God, which could never have 
been known but bv reasoning; from effects 
to their cause; for the eternal cause of all 
things is not corporeal, and therefore cannot 



94 THE RELIGION OF rHILOSOPIIY. 

come within the notice of our senses, but 
must be sought by reasoning; for it is as 
much out of the power of sensation to make 
that discovery, as it would be out of the power 
of the mind to form ideas of colours, or sound, 
in the instances of persons born blind or deaf. 
Nor could mere sensation have taught us the 
distinction between truth and falsehood, right 
and wrong, good and evil; to understand those 
distinctions would require the exercise of rea- 
son, nor could sensation, abstractedly consi- 
dered, give us the least notion of a state 
of immortality; for sensation terminates at 
death, and if there was not an intrinsic and 
essential difference between soul and body, 
both would be destroyed by death; and for 
want of making a just distinction between soul 
and body, some have been misled into an ap- 
prehension of the gloomy prospect of anni- 
hilation at death. 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 95 



^ectton 3. 



Of the Providence of God, as it respects 
the important Subject of the Immortality 
of the Soul. 

Death is called the king of terrors ; cer- 
tainly it is a solemn change, and to visible ap- 
pearance, the destruction of the whole man ; 
but it should be considered, that it is not at 
all beyond the power or goodness of God, to 
invest the soul at the death of the body, with 
new modes of sensation, entirely diverse from 
those we are at present united to; and which, 
while we are in this life, we cannot conceive, 
provided it be requisite, in order to our im- 
mortality or mode of future existence; but we 
are so imperfect with respect to our specula- 
tions on the manner of existence of unem- 
bodied souls, that we know not whether it 
will be necessary or not, that departed souls 



96' the religion or PHILOSOPHY. 

should be united to any sort of sensorium 
at all when they are separated from the body 
by death; they may, for aught we know, be 
suited without any sensitive vehicle to their 
immortal state, and manner of existence. All 
that we know, is, that all possible power and 
goodness belong to God, so that there can 
be no rational doubt or disbelief, but that the 
God, who made us, has constituted our souls, 
so that they will survive their bodies, and 
exist in such a manner, as is of all others the 
best for them, (consistent with that of the 
scale of being in general,) and most worthy of 
the perfection of God, although he lias not 
seen fit to indulge us with .the knowledge of it. 
The Providence of God has been abundantly 
and conspicuously displayed towards us in 
this life, on whicli we may, with great con- 
fidence, build our darling and important 
hope of immortality. Ungrateful and foolish 
in use it be for rational beings, in possession of 
existence, and surrounded with a kind and 
Almighty Providence, to distrust the Author 
thereof, concerning their futurity, because they 
cannot comprehend the mode or manner of 
their succeeding and progressive existence. 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 97 

While we consider the eternity and infinity 
of God, and of his creation and providence, 
and that his ultimate design, in the whole, 
must have been to exalt and make happy the 
moral world; that human life is but a pre- 
sage and pre-requisite existence for an intro- 
duction into another more dignified in the 
order of being ; those vain and idle distrusts 
of our immortality will vanish, and our minds 
will be established in a firm reliance on God, 
that in the order of Nature and course of his 
Providence, (however inconceivable to us,) he 
has secured our immortality. It is in vain 
for as, while in this life, to expect to under- 
stand the manner of our future existence, or 
how mental beings, devoid of sensitive ve- 
hicles, or of such sort of sensations as ours, 
exert thought and reflection on new subjects 
in a new world, or how they interchangeably 
communicate intelligence to one another. 
These matters cannot be known to us, so long 
as we are dependent on our present senses for 
the production of our knowledge ; for our 
present organized sensations are inadequate 
to such discoveries ; they are calculated for 
this world only, in which they admirably well 

H 



( JS THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY, 

answer their design, use, and end; but are un- 
equal to the task of giving our minds any 
images or representations of things beyond the 
grave, their common repository. 

Inconsiderate it is for mankind to object 
to the doctrine of immortality, because they 
cannot conceive such a state, or how it will 
be: this is deducing an objection, not from 
reason or argument, but from mere ignorance. 
I do not pretend to communicate the know- 
ledge of the manner of it; but I shall proceed 
to collect rational arguments, from the perfec- 
tions, creation, and providence of God, and 
particularly from the intrinsic nature of the 
soul, to evince its immortality. But objectors 
to this doctrine demand sensible or ocular de- 
monstrations for it, which cannot be had. 
" For eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor 
hath it entered into the" mind "of man to 
conceive" an idea of the manner of it. A 
man born blind, might with the same pro- 
priety, or rather impropriety, object to the 
reality of colours, or of sight, and pledge his 
ignorance for the proof of it, as we may ob- 
ject to the doctrine of immortality, because 
w T e cannot, in this life, and through the medium 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 99 

of our sensorium, apprehend the manner of 
our succeeding existence; the reality of which 
depends not on the weakness of our reason- 
ings, or the inadequateness or impropriety of 
our present sensations, to discover the state, 
condition, or manner of it; but it depends 
altogether on God, and on his eternalizing the 
nature of cogitative and intellectual beings 
or not. AVhile we are in this life we should 
adore God, and with gratitude confide in the 
ultimate goodness of his Providence, to dis- 
close to our minds the mysterious objects and 
manner of the world to come, at death ; for 
then, and not till then, shall we need that 
knowledge. Undoubtedly our Creator wisely 
limited the objects of our perception to the 
world wherein we live, and restricted our sim- 
ple ideas to the objects of sense, on which 
we are necessitated to superstruct all our 
knowledge of things in general. Thus it is, 
that our Creator in the order of the succession 
of causes has made use of those mere simple 
images of external things, to disclose to our 
understandings, whatever he sees fit to gratify 
us with the knowledge or perception of, while 
in this life; therefore all our knowledge of 

h 2 



100 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

things universally, while in this life, must be 
deduced from the present order of human na- 
ture, and the world we live in, from which 
we attempt to illustrate the doctrine of im- 
mortality. 

Ideas once taken or conceived by the mind 
through the medium of its senses, and retain- 
ed in the memory, are capable of being re- 
viewed, corrected, improved, and diversified 
in all possible methods of thinking and argu- 
mentation, although the external objects 
w*hich excited the images, from whence 
those argumentative arrangements origina- 
ted, may have been absent for a suc- 
cession of years ; for instance, I may have re- 
tained the ideas or arguments of an author, 
whom I read twenty years ago, though I 
may not have read the book or heard of it 
since; so I may retain a remembrance of 
sounds, which I heard as long since, and be 
able to make new observations or argumenta- 
tions thereon ; so likewise for instances wherein 
persons have been deprived or have lost their 
senses of seeing or hearing, or both; yet 
the mind, having once received ideas 
through those senses, in the time of their use- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 101 

fulness, is able to reflect and reason on their 
original images, the same as though it had 
never been deprived of those sensations, but 
could never, after the deprivation of its 
senses of seeing or hearing, receive any new 
ideas of either seeing or hearing, but would 
be restricted to those images of seeing or 
hearing, which were apprehended by the mind, 
previous to its loss of those senses, for its new 
and progressive compositions, or modifica- 
tions of those original ideas, and would re- 
tain the knowledge and consciousness of the 
state of things made perceptible to them 
through the medium of those senses of seeing 
and hearing, for ever after the loss of them, 
or at least during the period of life ; which we 
know to be true in fact. From all which we 
may with propriety infer, that the human 
soul, allowing it a separate state of existence, 
must necessarily retain a remembrance or 
consciousness of this world and of its agency 
or conduct in it, though the body, the instru- 
ment of sensation, through which medium the 
soul, during the period of life, was enabled 
to apprehend its simple sensible ideas, be 
totally destroyed by death. 



102 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Admitting that the soul survives after death, 
and is by nature immortal; and also that the 
mode of its future existence is different from 
its manner of existence in this world ; that 
death is a relief from carnality and physical 
evil, and shall raise departed spirits to a rank 
or condition in the order of being, superior to 
their survivors on earth; it will follow of 
necessary consequence, that those, who are 
survivors, could form no manner of conception 
of such an elevated kind of existence, as it 
would be supernatural to human conception 
in this compounded nature, consisting of sen- 
sation and reflection. 

To suppose, that while we are in this state 
of probation, Ave could comprehend the man- 
ner of that which is beyond death, would 
be the same as to suppose that both states are 
alike ; and that after death we shall exist in 
the same manner as we do here; and thus 
inadvertently, in idea, carry our mortality 
with us into the next state, and conceive 
of acting much the same as at present, 
which mode of existence would be subject 
to a second death, incompatible with our 
cheering hope of immortality; therefore, 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 103 

as certain as our souls are immortal, the man- 
ner of our immortality cannot be understood 
by us in this life. Were it possible for us 
in this life to break in upon the order of 
being, and perceive and understand the 
felicities and glorious manner of existence in 
the world to come, it could not fail to embitter 
all our enjoyments, and make us discontented 
and miserable from the anticipation of a feli- 
city beyond our condition in the order of 
beings, and wholly disqualify us to act 
in our several stations and relations in the 
present life; from whence we may learn the 
wisdom and goodness of God, in conceal- 
ing from us, in this state, the ecstatic blessed- 
ness which virtuous souls will be qualified 
for, and be admitted to partake of in the 
next. 

It is not rational to expect that any new 
laws of Nature will take place upon our com- 
mencing existence in a future state ; though 
the manner of that state, and our existence in 
it, will be new to us; inasmuch as the exter- 
nal order of nature has not as yet brought us 
into those future circumstances, and as our 
first perception of things in this world are new 



104 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to us, so, in the same sense, the manner of 
our future state, and of our existence in it, 
will be new; there will be an entire change 
of the mode of our perception, but the iden- 
tity of our souls never can be changed; for 
the principle of the mind of A. and its indi- 
vidual consciousness, can never be the indivi- 
dual or identical principle of the mind and 
consciousness of B.; the same will hold 
equally true with respect to all rational 
beings, for there are as many individual souls 
as there are separate or distinct cogitative 
principles or essences. 

Were we to admit that two individual and 
distinct minds were possessed of the same con- 
sciousness (except as to their individuality of 
essence, which is not possible,) they would 
not be, in consequence thereof, the same mind, 
any more than though their whole conscious- 
nesses were dissimilar; for likeness is not same- 
ness, any more than unlikeness is so ; but rea- 
son and consciousness will certainly remain 
the same, as to nature and kind, in all possi- 
ble modes of existence; though the manner 
of perception, or the objects of it, may be 
liable to inconceivable alterations and diver- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 105 

§ity, notwithstanding thinking beings are 
essentially the same ; for if they reflect and 
reason, they are conscious they do so, be they 
in what state or manner of existence they will; 
or be the objects of reflection and conscious- 
ness what they will: our present five senses 
are diverse in their manner of communicating 
the notices of external objects to the mind; 
so that in this life, we experience the advan- 
tage of a diversity in the mode of sensation, 
as seeing is not hearing. We may from hence 
infer the possibility of our minds forming 
ideas through the medium of other senses, 
or such a medium as at present we can have 
no conception of; for reasoning, which is 
essential to the exercise of a rational soul, is 
but a succession of thinking, and comparing 
ideas together, and drawing conclusions from 
certain premises, previously laid down in 
the mind; nor is the manner or the objects 
of perception particularly essential to reason- 
ing; for if the mind has an apprehension of 
things, it can reason thereon, be the manner 
of those apprehensions what it will, or in what 
world it will ; for as it is not essential to mere 
creation to occupy any particular form 



106 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

though it must exist in some form or other, 
so any particular mode of existence or ap- 
prehension is not essential to the soul, though 
it must likewise exist in some state or other, 
and be supplied with some sort of apprehen- 
sion or other, on which it may found its 
reasonings, and superstruct its knowledge and 
happiness. 

From the foregoing observations, it does 
not appear any way contradictory to the 
order of Nature, as far as we are acquainted 
with it, that our souls should survive our bodies, 
and that they are by nature immortal, and 
capable of existing in a mode and manner 
very different from this world, and from our 
manner of existence and conversation in it, and 
of which at present, we can form no right 
conception: nor that in our progressive state, 
or condition of being and action, we should 
retain a remembrance, and consequently a 
consciousness, that we are the same indivi- 
dual intelligent beings, who inhabited and 
actuated our respective bodies while in this life ; 
and also a consciousness of our previous man- 
ner of existence, and of our deportment or 
agency in moral good and evil. For if this is 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 10? 

not the case, our respective proficiencies in mo- 
ral good and evil, in this stage of action, 
cannot be attended with consequences of 
conscious mental happiness or misery, in our 
commencing a succeeding existence ; for, to 
be intelligently or mentally happy or miserable, 
without a consciousness of it, is contradictory 
and impossible. So that if, in our pro- 
gressive state of being and action, we be not 
conscious of what we have done and trans- 
acted in this world, God, in his order of 
Nature, (which is the same as his Providence,) 
could not reward or punish man in his future 
state, for his virtuous or vicious agencies in 
this, which would be incompatible with the 
divine administration of justice and goodness. 
We must therefore admit, that if our souls 
have a future existence, we must then have a 
consciousness, not only of our identity of 
being, but also of our demeanour in this life ; 
and thus by a retrospective consciousness, 
begin a condition of mental felicity, or men- 
tal pungent woe, according to our works; 
which an awakened conscience, and the jus- 
tice of God will disclose, at that important and 
awful crisis of our unembodied and incom- 
prehensible existence. 



108 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Animal nature, as has been before observ- 
ed, consists of a regular constitution of a va- 
riety of organic parts, all of which have a 
necessary dependence on one another. Blood 
is the source of life, and in order to preserve 
the machine, and perpetuate its functions, it 
is requisite that it should have a due circula- 
tion from the heart to the extreme parts of the 
body, to replenish it with homogeneous par- 
ticles, vital heat, and vigour ; from thence re- 
turning to the heart, and that it may repeat its 
temporary rounds, certain arteries and veins 
have been wisely constructed for that purpose. 
But the brain is evidently the seat of sensation, 
which through the nerves conveys the animal 
spirits to every part of the body, qualifying it 
with sensation and elastic motion, which is of 
an exquisite, subtile, etherial, and electrical 
quality, and almost instantaneous in its ope- 
ration, and in which the mind takes its residence 
in this life. This sensorium, through which 
we acquire ideas of external objects, can form 
no conception of other minds, or of mere 
mental beings, except by the application of 
their external sensation to ours, or by language 
either oral or written, of which we understand 



TH£ RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 109 

the signs ; nor can our gross sensations repre- 
sent the perception of our own minds to our- 
selves. The knowledge therefore of our co- 
gitative nature is not compounded of sensible 
ideas, which are deduced mediately from ma- 
terial beings; but the knowledge which men- 
tal beings have of their own existence, is from 
their consciousness of being, reflection, and 
ratiocination, together with other mental ex- 
ertions ; which are unobsei^able, as well by our 
own sensations as by our neighbours ; inas- 
much as intellectual beings are imperceptible 
to the aptitudes of sensation; for they are 
neither long nor short, round nor square, black 
nor white, nor do they occupy space as ma- 
terial beings do; or consist of such a quality, 
on which our sensations can operate ; but, as 
has been observed, the mind is conscious of 
itself, and of its own agency, though it could 
not have had any apprehension of external 
objects independent of sensation. As sensa- 
tion is the result of the operation of matter 
on the organs of animated beings, its aptitudes 
are restricted to material existences, and there- 
fore can make no discoveries of mere cogita- 
tive beings, whether that of our own souls, or 



110 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of the souls of others ; for our own minds are 
as imperceptible by our own sensations, as that 
of a pure angel may be supposed to be; which 
I presume will be conceded by the contem- 
plative, who examine into matters of fact, 
collectable from their own experience. 

That our minds reflect, remember, reason, 
and judge of things, and are able to reconsi- 
der them, and make refinements and profici- 
encies upon their own reasonings, is a fact 
which every day's experience will confirm. 
The soul has a power, not only to exert its 
mental faculties, but to actuate its organized 
body into spontaneous motion, to answer the 
purposes of wisdom, contrivance, and design; 
which are effects too stupendous to arise out 
of mere matter, figure, and motion, with their 
effects and combinations: and which must 
therefore be ascribed to a superior principle, 
that is intrinsically distinct from matter, and 
which may continue to exist when the body 
is destroyed by death, and is no longer a 
suitable habitation or receptacle for it. 

The body itself, notwithstanding its fluctu- 
ating and perishable nature, does not present 
us with any idea of annihilation ; its final clis- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. Ill 

solution and return to its original ele- 
ments is no more than a dissolution of the 
form and construction of the particles, with 
their cohesive and animal aptitudes and com- 
binations, and by no means a dissolution or 
annihilation of matter; for no particular form 
is essential to the existence of matter, though 
it is essential to the existence of animal life ; 
but mere matter exists in all possible forms 
and fluxilities. 

And as in nature, there is no annihilation 
of matter, as such, it is a strong argument in 
favor of the immortality of rational beings; 
inasmuch as they are not liable to such 
pl^sical changes, as animal bodies are ob- 
noxious to. Thought and reflection, memory 
and judgment, invention and design, derive 
not their essence from the mass of incogita- 
tive elements, but are in their own nature 
immortal ; for that which is immaterial is ex- 
empted from physical evils, when divested of 
its connection with matter, and inasmuch as 
matter universally was created and variously 
endowed, tempered, and qualified, regulated 
and governed, (more especially such a part as 
composes human bodies,) wholly to subserve 



112 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

thinking and rational beings; and inasmuch 
as the ultimate end of creation, and the prin- 
cipal design of Providence, must have been to 
subserve the moral world, by displaying the 
wisdom, power, and goodness of God to cogi- 
tative and intellectual beings, we may be 
morally certain, that in the order of Nature 
and course of God's Providence, he has se- 
cured to us a never ending existence, and that 
mind as well as matter will be eternal. For, 
strangely irrational would be the reverse of 
the consideration, that the soul, the thinking 
mind, or immaterial part of man, should be 
annihilated and lost, while the corrupt or 
material particles of the human body should 
eternally remain, though subject to a change 
of form in the great mass of matter; for hu- 
man life, abstractedly considered from the re- 
ality of immortality, would hardly be desired 
by the generality of mankind, could they 
have but a clear understanding of the physi- 
cal evils of it, and also of the oppres- 
sions, abuses, and injustice which is " done 
under the sun." From the consideration 
whereof, the reputed wise man "praised the 
dead more than the living, which are yet 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 113 

alive." Should we admit that death extin- 
guishes the being of man, what narrow and 
contracted notions must we consequently en- 
tertain of God and his creation? We should 
be necessitated to deduce an inference of in- 
justice against his Providence, from the un- 
equal distribution of justice in this life, which 
on a supposition of a future state of being 
may be remedied. As true as mankind now 
exist, and are endowed with reason and un- 
derstanding, and have the power of agency 
and proficiency in moral good and evil, so 
true it is, that they must be ultimately re- 
warded, or punished, according to their re- 
spective merits or demerits; and it is as true, 
as this world exists, and rational and account- 
able beings inhabit it, that the distribution 
of justice therein is partial, unequal, uncer- 
tain; and consequently it is as true as there 
is a God, that there must be a future state 
of existence, in which the disorder, injus- 
tice, oppression, and vice, which are acted 
and transacted by mankind in this life, shall 
be righteously adjusted, and the delinquents 
suitably punished; and that the virtuous, who 
obey the laws of reason or moral fitness, 

i 



114 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

which are the laws of God, shall receive a just 
and rational enjoyment of happiness, accord- 
ing to their works; nor is it assuming too 
much to conceive it probable, that such hap- 
piness may be progressive with their future 
merits; for God may as well cease to be, as 
cease to be just, or not appear so ultimately. 

The natural hope and strong expectation 
of immortality, which mankind in all ages, 
countries, and nations, have entertained, is 
a presage and earnest of that eternal inheri- 
tance; for it could not be from the invention 
and tradition of men, inasmuch as it has 
taken place among all the traditions and reli- 
gious sectaries of the world, except the Sad- 
ducees, who rejected it because it was not to 
be met with in the theology of Moses, 
their lawgiver, who they supposed was im- 
mediately dictated to by God, and could not 
have failed of promulgating the doctrine of 
immortality, had it been in fact true ; but none 
of the human race, who have not been thus pre- 
possessed by erroneous traditions to the contra- 
ry, have failed of hoping and believing in the 
reality of a future existence ; the barbarous and 
uncultivated nations of the earth not excepted : 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 115 

and as this expectation has made such 
a deep and universal impression on the hu- 
man mind, we must conclude it to be the 
voice of Nature powerfully and universally 
evincing the immortality of man. And as 
there can be no doubt of the complete pow- 
er of God, to eternize mental, cogitative, and 
intellectual beings, so there can be no doubt 
but that his perfection of goodness has in- 
duced him, in his order of Providence, to 
accomplish so great, benevolent, and godlike 
a work, to his eternal glory, and the everlast- 
ing best good of a whole world of intelligent 
and rational beings. 

Wherefore, my children, let us persevere in 
the practice of virtue, habitually conforming 
ourselves to the moral rectitude of things, 
and wait patiently the few days that God 
sees fit to continue us in this life; remember- 
ing that, at death, the mysterious state of 
immortality will be unfolded unto us, and 
that until then, it will be best for us not to 
understand the superior manner and ecsta- 
tic felicities thereof. Sufficient is it for us 
at present, for the encouragement of mo- 
rality, that we believe, from the highest 

i 2 



116 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

moral certainty, that there is such a future 
state, leaving it to the God who made us, 
to unfold the manner of it, at such time 
as his order of Nature shall bring us into the 
fruition of it. 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 117 



A SUMMARY. 



As a summary to this work, to show my 
humble conception of the relative situation 
of man, as the creature, to God, his Crea- 
tor, I do exceedingly hope that my own 
offspring, for whom it is more particularly 
designed, and every other attentive reader 
that may possibly meet with it, will be per- 
fectly satisfied with the general principles 
laid down in the preceding chapters, viz. 
that a knowledge of the being, perfections, 
creation, and providence of God, is most 
desirable; and that the observations and ar- 



118 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

guments to evince the eternity and infinity 
of God; the cause of idolatiy ; the eternity 
of creation; the eternity and infinitude of 
divine Providence, without interfering with 
the agency of man's free-will; the considera- 
tion of the doctrine of the infinite evil of 
sin ; of the moral government of God, being 
incompatible with eternal punishment; of 
the extent of human liberty, agency, and 
accountability; of physical evils; of the 
immortality of the human soul; on the dif- 
ference between sensation and the principle 
of the human soul; and, lastly, of the pro- 
vidence of God, respecting the immortality 
of the soul. I hope it is conclusively evi- 
dent to the humblest capacity, that there is 
and must be an almighty superintending 
power, as God, to whom we, as his creatures, 
must necessarily be subordinate; and that we 
ought to endeavour to conduct ourselves in 
such sort as will best discharge the duties of 
morality and religion ; the sum of which being 
comprised in gratitude to God and love to man, 
it can never be the will of the Deity that the 
latter should be given up to show a zeal for 
the former; nor can it be supposed that God 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 119 

created, in order that man might persecute 
and destroy the work of his hands. Yet, 
absurd as this view of religious zealots 
may appear, it is a correct character of 
those who enlist under the banners of reli- 
gious intolerance, which has greatly contri- 
buted to strengthen the cause of infideli- 
ty. I hope, therefore, that whatever may be 
the religious persuasion of the reader, the 
preceding contemplations on the eternity and 
infinity of God, consisting of wisdom, pow- 
er, justice, goodness, and truth, with their 
eternally connected and almighty operations, 
will have the full and due effect on every 
rational mind. 

Modes of faith and exterior forms of wor- 
ship are but the exterior connections and 
bands by which religion is compacted, and 
the frame or outer shell in which the more 
sacred and essential part is deposited; an 
accidental ornament, but no necessary and 
indisputable connection. He, therefore, who 
pleads the cause of externals, as equally a 
duty with the pure and simple parts of wor- 
ship, sets up the shadow in competition with 
the substance, and dishonours the cause he 



120 THE liELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

professes to serve. Religion receives no 
sanction from rites, but rites are consecrated 
by religion; which are proper, and deserve 
to be attended to when they contribute to 
its advancement. To suppose that the Deity 
requires as indispensable, and regards as 
important, what, in the bare eye of reason 
and to a moderate share of understanding, 
appears trivial and idle, is derogatory to 
his wisdom, and a far greater affront to his 
glory than to banish for ever every species of 
ceremony from his worship. But to perse- 
cute and torment others on these accounts; 
to imprison and slay, to hate and detest our 
fellow-creatures, for not adopting the same 
precise form of words in their oaths of fide- 
lity and expressions of homage to their great 
superior; and to shelter our cruelty under 
the sanction of his sacred will; is treason 
against his divine nature. The great object 
of our adoration is One; and every form in 
which he beholds his worshiper is accepted, 
when sanctified by purity of intention, an 
upright heart, and correctness of conduct. 

If we examine into the character of bigots 
in general, far from finding them to be per- 



THE RELIGION" OF PHILOS.OPHY. 121 

sons of greater virtues than others, we can 
see in them nothing that is amiable or lauda- 
ble. Of whatever persuasion they may be, 
there exists not a more disagreeable and 
odious tribe; and in such a soil generally 
flourish the more ignoble passions, whose 
growth, with respect to our neighbours, by 
virtue's laws demand to be curbed and not 
encouraged. 

It is not enough for the heated zealot that 
he enjoys his own peculiar notions and cus- 
toms: his fury hurries him further, and he 
discards the virtues of religion, meekness, 
charity, and universal love, which are the 
sweetest incense man can offer at the altar, 
to make room for the apish quackery of 
superstition. He is not content alone to fall 
prostrate and worship the object of his adorati- 
on; but he must compel others to do the like 
in his way, however repugnant to their consci- 
entious ways of thinking. The opinions of a 
man are not under his control; he cannot 
change them as a cameleon changes the colours 
of his skin. What is not in his power he can 
never be accountable for, and bare profes- 
sions are of no weight or value. 



122 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

There are, on the contrary, advocates for 
ceremony, as a subordinate part of religion; 
as a form in which it should be seen and 
known; as proper to entice and assemble 
such, for its votaries, as would not otherwise, 
through slowness of apprehension, have dis- 
covered its residence; and as conducing to 
confirm the minds of those who are enlisted 
in its service. With them I readily concur. 
The undiscerning minds of the vulgar, of all 
nations, are not sufficiently refined to relish 
the sentimental and pure dictates of religion, 
without externals; something striking and 
visible must be adopted, which is brought 
down on a level with their capacities. What 
they do not comprehend can never please 
them; and what does not please them will 
not engage their attention. 

Externals, then, with persons of judge- 
ment, are to be considered only as instru- 
ments or assistants of religion, not as actually 
a constituent part of it. Under this view 
they are useful, and in some measure may be 
necessary. But as punctilios in our beha- 
viour one towards another, mere compliments 
of politeness, are not honoured with the 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 123 

name of friendship, so neither are ceremonies 
in religion dignified with the appellation of 
religion; but they should be used or neglect- 
ed, curtailed or increased, as circumstances 
and situation of a people are judged to 
require; and in this consideration of the 
situation, the climate under which they live 
is a material circumstance, and has been 
much attended to by former legislators. But 
no rites or ceremonies can be allowed to 
violate the laws of Nature. With respect to 
all mere positive constitutions, injunctions, 
rites, and ceremonies, that do not come 
within the jurisdiction of the law of Nature, 
they are political matters, and may be en- 
acted, dispensed with, abolished, re-enacted, 
compounded, or diversified, as convenience, 
power, opportunity, inclination, or interest, 
or all together, may dictate; inasmuch as 
they are not founded on any stable or uni- 
versal principle of reason, but change with 
the customs, fashions, traditions, and revolu- 
tions, of the world; having no centre of 
attraction but interest, power, and advan- 
tages of a temporary nature. 

When we reflect on the state and circum- 



124 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

stances of mankind in this world; their va- 
rious languages and interchangeable methods 
of communicating intelligence to each other, 
which are subject to perpetual alterations 
and refinements; the insuperable difficulties 
in translating antient manuscripts with any 
considerable degree of perfection; as also 
our being exposed to the practices of im- 
postors; with a variety of other deceptions, 
blunders, and inaccuracies, which unavoida- 
bly attend written and diverse or variously 
•translated works; we cannot too much ad- 
mire the wisdom and goodness of God, in 
imparting his law to us in the constitution of 
our rational nature, placing it within the 
scope of man's understanding, and thereby 
enabling us to exercise our own judgment 
without relying too much on others; to point 
out our duty in all circumstances and vicissi- 
tudes of human life; and to comprehend and 
judge, not only of what he has revealed in his 
works of creation, but likewise of certain other 
of his mysterious truths, with which at the first 
glance our conceptions appear to be nearly 
confounded, and which seem paradoxical; 
yet, by a proper exertion of our intellectual 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 125 

powers, we obtain a satisfactory knowledge 
of their truth. For instance: it is a maxim 
of truth, " that with God all things are 
possible;" yet it should be considered that 
contradictions and consequently impossibili- 
ties are not comprehended in the definition 
of things, but are diametrically the reverse 
of them, as may be seen in the definition of 
the word things; to wit, " Whatever is/' 
There is no contradiction in nature or truth, 
which comprehends all things; therefore the 
maxim is just, " That with God all things 
are possible," viz. all things in nature are 
possible with God; but contradictions are 
falsehoods which have no positive existence, 
but are the negative to things, or to nature, 
which comprehends ** Whatever is f so that 
contradictions are opposed to nature and 
truth, and are no things, but the chimeras of 
weak unintelligent minds, who make false 
applications of things to persons, or ascribe 
such powers, qualities, dispositions, and ap- 
titudes to things, as nature never invested 
them with. It derogates nothing from the 
ppwer and absolute perfection of God, that 
he cannot make both parts of a contradiction 



126 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to be true. The figure of a triangle and that 
of a square is different one from the other, in 
the essentials of their formation, so that the 
one is not and cannot be of the same shape 
as the other; for the same figure which gives 
the existence of the truth of the triangle 
negatives the possibility of its being a square, 
and the same truth which is predicated on 
the form and figure of the mountains neces- 
sarily gives being to the figure of the valleys 
at the same time: the figure of the latter 
" results from and is necessarily produced by 
the figure of the former, nor is it possible for 
omnipotence itself to give the mountains and 
the valleys an independent and separate 
existence from each other: likewise the same 
truth which is predicated on the fact of the 
existence of any thing, denies the possibility 
of its not existing at the same time. 

That God can do any thing and every 
thing that is consonant to his moral perfec- 
tions, and which does not imply a contra- 
diction to the nature of the things them- 
selves and the essential relation which they 
bear to each other, none will dispute; but to 
suppose that, inasmuch as God is all-power- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 127 

ful, he can therefore do every thing which 
we, in our ignorance of nature or of moral 
fitness, may ascribe to him, without under- 
standing whether it is either consonant to 
moral rectitude or to the nature of the things 
themselves, and the immutable relations and 
connections which they bear to each other or 
not, is great weakness and folly. That God 
cannot, in the exercise of his providence or 
moral government, counteract the perfec- 
tions of his nature, or do any manner of 
injustice, is manifestly certain; nor is it pos- 
sible for God to effect a contradiction in the 
natural world, any more than in the moral. 
The impossibility of the one results from the 
moral perfections of God, and the impossi- 
bility of the other from the immutable pro- 
perties, qualities, relations, and nature of 
the things themselves; as in the instances 
of the mountains, valleys, &c. before al- 
luded to, and in numberless other similar 
cases. 

Doubts have arisen in the minds of some, 
as to the possibility of the soul of man being 
removed from this world to the world above, 
or from earth to heaven, without enduring a 



128 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

journey of many thousands of years, far 
exceeding the Mosaic history of the creation 
of this world, which, as therein stated, they 
observe is not yet seven thousand years old ; 
and to prove this their position as to the im- 
mense length of time of so extraordinary a 
journey, they argue, that it is computed by 
astronomers that the dog-star, Sirius, is dis- 
tant from our earth above two millions of 
millions of English miles; a distance so 
exceedingly great, that it is calculated a 
dannon-ball, continuing in the same velocity 
it acquires when immediately discharged at 
the cannon's mouth, would spend almost 
seven hundred thousand years in passing 
through such space. 

This sceptical doubt is, however, soon re- 
moved, so as to satisfy and meet the under- 
standing of the commonest reasoner, and 
that without any great exertion of the rea- 
soning faculties, by reflecting on the power 
which God has given to the soul or mind of 
man, even in this probationary world; a 
power so infinitely great, and beyond what 
is generally thought of, that, were it not 
common to all mankind, it might ap- 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 129 

pear miraculous. I allude to the rapid speed, 
exceeding every other idea or conception of 
speed, with which thought, the soul of man, 
instantaneously traverses this immensity of 
space, thereby removing the cause for doubts 
and difficulties of such sceptics. 

This, then, is another proof of man's 
reasoning faculties; making it evident, to 
moderate understandings, that what has thus 
been ascertained concerning the number, 
nature, and distance of the fixed stars, by 
the astronomers and learned men of all ages, 
the hypothesis of a plurality of worlds, 
wherein each fixed star serves as a sun to a 
system of planets, seems most rational, wor- 
thy of philosophy, and greatly displays the 
wisdom and redounds to the glory of the 
great Creator and Governor of the Universe. 

To return to the subject of the differences 
among mankind respecting matters of faith; 
it is often objected, that the far greater part 
of mankind believe according to the tradition 
of their forefathers, without examining into 
the grounds of it; and that argumentative 
deductions from the reason and nature of 

K 



130 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

things have, with the bulk of them, but 
little or no influence on their faith. 

That tradition has had powerful influence 
on the human mind is universally admitted, 
even by those who are governed by it in the 
articles of discipline of their faith; for, 
though they are blind with respect to their 
own superstition, yet they can perceive and 
despise it in others. Protestants very readily 
discern and expose the weak side of popery, 
and papists are as ready and acute in disco- 
vering the errors of heretics. With equal 
facility do Christians and Mahometans spy 
out each other's inconsistencies, and both 
have an admirable sagacity in descrying the 
superstition of the heathen nations. Nor 
are the Jews silent in this matter: " O God! 
the heathen come into thine inheritance, thy 
holy temple have they defiled/' What abo- 
mination must this have been in the opinion 
of a nation who had monopolised all religion 
to themselves, as the chosen of God! The 
Christians call the Mahometans by the odious 
name of infidels; but the mussulmen, in 
their opinion, cannot call the Christians by a 
worse name than that which they have given 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 131 

themselves; they, therefore, call them Chris- 
tians: but neither the interchange of odious 
language, nor the misconduct of men, nor 
the great diversity of religious opinions, can 
alter the nature of things. Instead, there- 
fore, of thus reviling and persecuting each 
other for differences in doctrinal faith, 
which, as we cannot coerce it without 
conviction, we cannot be accountable for, 
how much more desirable, how benefici- 
al as well as creditable, would it be, to 
endeavour to harmonize with each other, 
however wide the difference between the 
respective beliefs as to the purest and best 
mode of worshiping God. For an example, 
I will take the Christian and the Jew. 

I do conceive it is not possible to find 
language too strong and elevated for the 
Christian to make use of, in pourtraying the 
beauties of the moral doctrines of the Chris- 
tian religion; for this is what neither Jew, 
Mahometan, nor heathen, can gainsay; and, 
should an eloquent preacher, whose soul is 
deeply impressed with the truths of revela- 
tion, and who from conviction firmly believes 
in Christ as the Son of God, and that as 

k 2 



132 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

such he came down from heaven to save re- 
penting sinners who place their faith in him; 
believing also in the doctrine of atonement; 
should he, I say, use arguments as persuasive 
as so delightful and glorious a theme might 
warrant and inspire, who, that heard, could 
possibly resist the desire, at least, to believe 
in a doctrine so highly interesting, so in- 
viting, and divinely comfortable? For, nei- 
ther Jew, Mahometan, nor heathen, have any 
thing to compare with, or that is half so 
desirable in their respective creeds, as the 
being rescued from sin and damnation by 
the meritorious sufferings of the Son of 
God. Yet, allowing that the Jew should 
attentively hear, and, having sedulously ex- 
amined, should well appreciate the advan- 
tages and benefits thus held out to all 
true believers; considering how much ea- 
sier it would be for him to obtain a for- 
giveness of his sins in this world and sal- 
vation in the next, provided he could by any 
means in his power acquire a sound convic- 
tion of the truths of Christianity, in pre- 
ference to his depending on his own endea- 
vours in the work of salvation, by a rigid 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 133 

adherence to the Mosaic law and the prophets, 
is it not natural to suppose that he would 
gladly embrace so divine, so delectable, a 
doctrine? But if, in defiance of his earnest 
wish and most strenuous endeavours to obtain 
so desirable a faith, he should find it impossi- 
ble to bring his mind into such a persuasion, 
and should then candidly confess as much to 
the Christian, lamenting his inability to per- 
suade or to coerce his conscience, it would 
be the Christian's dut}^ to pray for his con- 
version, but it could never become him to 
revile, much less to persecute and torture, 
the conscientious Jew, for not being able to 
force his faith. 

The genuine true disciple of Christ would 
meekly and thankfully rejoice that his own 
burden was so light, and his path made so 
easy by the suffering merits of a Redeemer 
in whom he believed, when compared with 
the Jew, whose reliance in the tradition 
of his forefathers, as delivered bj r the law 
of Moses and the prophets, was immova- 
ble. This comparison between the two 
would, or should, be an additional cause to 
the Christian for grateful adoration to i\l-> 



134 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

mighty God, but can be no reason for exhi- 
biting hatred to those he deems heretics. 

On the other hand, the Jew, who had 
listened with attention to the comfortable 
and desirable doctrine of being saved through 
the merits of Jesus Christ, might repine that 
he could not so readily obtain a remission of 
his sins by an act of faith which his con- 
scientious reasoning would not admit of; and 
the more heinous his transgressions, the 
stronger would be his desire to acquire such 
a sanctuary; but, being sensible that a mere 
declaration in words, contrary to his inward 
belief, would not avail him in the all-pene- 
trating judgment of God, and that he could 
not accept the gracious proffer ; yet such his 
rejection of the mercies through Christ, 
from his unhappy but inevitable, as un- 
conquerable, objection to the Christian faith, 
ought not to excite in him any envious, 
uncharitable, or reproachful thoughts towards 
the Christian, who sincerely believes in Christ 
as the Messiah and promised Redeemer of 
man. The conscientious reluctant unbelie- 
ver, satisfied with the law of Moses and the 
prophets, should continue fervent and devout 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 135 

in adoration of the God of his fathers, con- 
tentedly looking forward with hope to the 
coming of his Messiah and Redeemer, with- 
out rancour or hatred to others who differ 
from him in faith. 

In like manner, (as I hope I have impar- 
tially shewn,) how commendable and desira- 
ble would it be to harmonize the difference of 
religious opinions between the Christian and 
the Jew ! So the same reasoning may equally 
apply to the differences in the traditional 
modes of faith of all other relioions. 

The Christian stands pre-eminently high 
above others in his claims for salvation 
through the merits of a Mediator and Re- 
deemer, provided his faith is sure and his 
actions correspond with it; what a strength 
of argument, then, has he to urge, in addi- 
tion to what is advanced in this treatise on 
general principles: this, however, is more 
properly the province of the Christian di- 
vine. 

The disciples of Mahomet, of Brahma, 
of Confucius^ and the religious of all deno- 
minations, may likewise bring forward their 
respective creeds, to establish in the minds of 



136 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

men the existence of an Almighty God and 
his Providence. It is the duty, therefore, 
of the good men of every religion, so to har- 
monize with each other, that the fell destroy- 
er of all religion, virtue, and humanity, the 
modern French atheistical philosophy, may 
be defeated in its diabolical attempt to disor- 
ganize society and rob mankind of their 
brightest hope, a blessed immortality. 

What is thus observed upon tradition is 
sufficient to admonish us of its errors and 
superstitions, and the prejudices to which a 
bigoted attachment thereto exposes us; 
which is abundantly sufficient to excite us 
to a careful examination of our respective 
traditions, and not to rest satisfied until we 
have regulated our faith by reason, which 
infallibly directs to the main point in which 
most agree, a firm belief in an Almighty, 
Omniscient, and Beneficent Providence. 

There are, however, some among mankind 
by whom the doctrine of chance, or good or 
ill fortune, is considered to be the only lever 
capable of moving the universe: this is 
the contriver and chief engineer among the 
common people, who believe they know it to 



THE RELIGION OP PHILOSOPHY. 137 

be so; especially when, after much care, and 
the wisest measures for procuring themselves 
some advantage, or guarding against some 
misfortune, they perceive it is not precisely 
from the steps which they have taken that 
the fortunate or unfortunate event proceeded, 
but that some singularity, some unforeseen 
accident, had insensibly led them to it by 
paths unknown to human prudence. But 
can this, we know not what, which is called 
chance, be the cause of something, being 
nothing itself? We might, therefore, repre- 
sent it to ourselves as Wisdom with her hands 
tied behind her back, and reducing to sub- 
jection animate and inanimate nature. But, 
indeed, chance has no more power over what 
externally happens to us, than it has over 
what passes within our minds. 

There are essential relations of causes with 
effects, which, though hidden, are not less 
real and necessary. Nature has her mecha- 
nism and springs; and, if studied though 
ever so little, we may perceive the most 
perfect uniformity in her designs. AH her 
works, by an immense and continued chain, 
are connected w T ith one another, dependent 



138 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

on one another, and placed in such gra- 
dation, such harmony, in order so wisely 
combined, that they all concur, and with 
one common effort, to produce the motion 
which maintains and makes herself like unto 
herself. But even the term Nature is vague 
and indiscriminate, unless we have recourse 
to an Eternal Almighty Being, who by his 
breath animates Nature, who alone has the 
power of producing every thing in its rank, 
and who seems to dispose no otherwise of 
them contrary to our expectations, but be- 
cause we are ignorant of his laws, views, and 
motives. It is, therefore, neither fortune, 
nor chance, nor Nature herself, that alone 
regulates all here below; and what we call 
fortune, or misfortune, is but a consequence 
of the invariable plan that makes events 
spring up one after the other, and leads 
them on like so many links fastened toge- 
ther, and by unknown relations drawing 
after them others, to which other relations, 
equally secret, bind successively new ones. 
It is these relations, which we cannot 
know nor often foresee, that make us fancy 
an incorrectness and disorder, a dissonance 



THE RELIGION OE PHILOSOPHY. 139 

and contrariety, in most of the accidents of 
life. We should judge differently, if we 
could discover the inner parts of the machine : 
we might then see, that all particulars hold 
to one another, and that the motion which 
makes the blade of grass to vegetate in our 
fields, may be as really the occasion as the 
consequence of that which makes the stars 
to move. We might see that there is no 
absolute evil in the world ; and that, in effect, 
this supposed evil is a relative good in the 
hands of the Sovereign Mover of all beings, 
the God of Harmony. To succeed in our 
projects, it might seem proper for us to 
study the connections of things, to examine 
their proportions, and to seize upon, as it 
were, their hour and minute; but Ave can do 
nothing else than consign ourselves over to 
Providence, who alone is thoroughly ac- 
quainted with ^all the secret springs of his 
works; at the same time using our best en- 
deavours to support, with patience, what we 
call misfortune, and not to depend too much 
on whatever we may imagine may procure us 
fortunate and tranquil days. 

To show the importance of the exercise of 



140 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

reason and practice of morality, in order to 
the happiness of mankind, we should bear 
in remembrance that our period of life is 
very uncertain, and at the longest is but 
short; a few years bring us from infancy to 
manhood, a few more to dissolution: pain, 
sickness, and death, are the necessary conse- 
quences of animal life. Through life we 
struggle with physical evils, which eventually 
are certain to destroy our earthly composi- 
tion: and well would it be for sortie, did 
.evils end here; but, alas! moral evil has been 
more or less predominant in our agency, and 
though what we term natural evil is unavoid- 
able, yet moral evil may be prevented or 
remedied by the exercise of virtue. Mora- 
lity, therefore, is of more importance to us 
than any or all other attainments; as it is a 
habit of mind, which, from a retrospective 
consciousness of our agency in this life, we 
should carry with us into our succeeding state 
of existence, as an acquired appendage of 
our rational nature, and as the necessary 
means of our mental happiness. Virtue and 
vice are the only things in this world, which, 
with our souls, are capable of surviving 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHT. 141 

death: the former is the rational and only 
procuring cause of all intellectual happiness, 
and the latter of conscious guilt and misery ; 
and therefore our indispensable duty and 
ultimate interest is, to love, cultivate, and 
improve the one, as the means of our great- 
est good, and to hate and abstain from the 
other, as productive of our greatest evil. 

One of the noblest gifts of heaven is con- 
tent. Riches and honour are but the flattering 
promisers of what content alone can give. 
Viewed through the medium of content, 
kings and peasants are seen on a level, and 
the cottage suffers no diminution when set 
by the side of the palace. The one is not 
despised, nor the other envied ; but they are 
equally considered as accompanied with their 
share of felicity. 

There generally subsists in our hearts a 
common sentiment, which has contributed to 
form the first societies, and which, brought 
to the point it is now at, seems, notwith- 
standing, less proper for maintaining than 
dissolving them. This sentiment is the press- 
ing and continued desire of present happi- 
ness; and this desire is of all ages, all cha- 



THE RELIGION OF PHI n HT. 

racters, all climates, and all conditions of 
lite. It bears, more or less, on the objects 
that may gratify it ; but it bears equally on 
all. Proportionate to the number of the 
of happiness, are the transports 
"whereby re agitated. A single happier 

can seldom satisfy us: we would have all 
sorts at once, and possess them without alte- 
ration or division. The too eager pursuit 
after sensual happiness, frequently produ< 
intellectual misery. TThat should most sur- 
prise that we commonly do not know 
in what happines- or what are the 
surest means for procuring it: it ought, al 
to be durable, and so independent that no- 
thing but our own choice can deprive us of 
it. Is this the property of each species of 
good fortune ? Do not we seek i-kin to 
natural aflections. and if it may be so ex- 
pressed to the talents of the heart, what 
agrees least with them? as durable, what 
must necessarily have an end? as indepen- 
dent, that which, by not having its source 
in ourselves, we may be robbed of by the 
least accident: How many people appear 
to us flourishing amidst the smiles of fortune, 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 143 

yet, in the main, are no otherwise satisfied 
but so far as decorum, pride, or affectation 
of being so, compels them to it? Does the 
ambitious man esteem himself the child of 
Fortune, because he is rich? Does the cove- 
tous man, for being raised to the highest 
honours? And do not most men endeavour 
to gratify fleeting and rapid tastes, rather 
than the inclinations of their characters; 
which are never the same in all men, and 
which constantly make known that whatever 
is good in Nature is not equally good for the 
beings she has formed ? I say nothing of the 
short duration of fortune, which, like light- 
ning, whose entire vigour is in its birth, 
yields commonly but one report, which is 
dissipated almost in the moment of its 
appearance. But, if there is no fortune 
equal in permanency to desire, can it be 
maintained against the languor of satiety, 
the loathing of indifference, the instability of 
humour, the refinement of delicacy, and even 
the fear of seeing it end, wliich alone is often 
sufficient to weaken and spoil all the J03S it 
may be attended with. Neither do I speak 
of the daily obstacles which the man of for- 



144 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tune finds in the physical evils which besiege 
him on all sides, and, perhaps, still more in 
the multiplicity of cares which flutter about 
his gilded cielings, or chase his thoughts 
about with more impetuosity than the winds 
do the clouds. I now come to the means of 
acquiring a fortune, and consequently the 
happiness annexed to it; but first it were to 
be wished, that all could be dissuaded from 
being too eager in their quest after such 
fleeting happiness. We are only happ3 r , 
kideed, so far as we do not think of being 
so. This is a truth founded on reason and 
experience; for what can be a happiness, 
when, in order to enjoy it, we must, in some 
measure, divert our eyes from it, make no 
reflection, nor desire to know it. The case 
is very hard; and it may well be thought, 
that our lot is very unhappy, since, to pos- 
sess the gifts and pleasures of fortune, we 
should begin by being ignorant of them; 
whilst Providence thus kindly instructs, by 
giving us a foresight of the ills that threaten. 
But it is not, therefore, the less true, that 
even the means for attaining happiness spoil 
it before hand. We know of but one which 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 145 

is a happiness itself, and this is, the good 
use of reason. A happiness is durable, when 
reason never alters from itself; and it is inde- 
pendent, because no power whatever can 
command reason or bring it under subjection. 
The rules for attaining it are not severe, 
tending only to remove what is hurtful to 
human nature. Reason opposes no pleasure 
that is honest and compatible with temper- 
ance, no taste that is conformable to justice, 
no affection which probity allows of and 
honour and decorum do not blush to own. 
Reason, also, is the cause that the happiness 
procured by it does not depend on any 
success. The mean here becomes the end. 
In short, genuine reason, which is readily 
distinguished from the false by the reasoner 
himself, by its being approved or not by his 
own never-failing monitor, Conscience, is it- 
self a happiness, and blest with all the 
desirable gifts of fortune. Adversity can 
neither deject nor alter it; and, as a structure 
founded upon a rock, it braves the blustering 
rage of winds and storms. What will it 
signify to a man thus placed in society, 
where he is to make a figure during the short 

L 



146 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

space of his probationary life, what sort 
of station he takes? His felicity consists 
in behaving himself so as to reap the advan- 
tages he has there sought after, by doing 
good; in the full hope of receiving the joyful 
sentence of " Well done, thou good and 
faithful servant," &c. Let him be a Hercules 
or a Solomon, an emperor or a peasant, no 
character is so proper to him as that 
of a sociable man, which is common to him 
with the meanest of the actors on the stage 
of human life. It is the only title he can 
have to the joint stock of the company, if 
he faithfully discharges his duty, whether he 
be rich or poor, a nobleman or a plebeian. 
His good or ill fortune, his happiness or 
imhappiness, can only proceed from his 
punctuality or negligence in this respect; any 
thing else is all illusion and vain phantasma; 
it is only in our virtues or vices that we ought 
to seek after the source of good or ill fortune, 
prosperity or adversity, happiness or unhap- 
piness. But, above all, it behoves us to 
consider seriously, that the cause of good or 
ill fortune, unknown to most men, can in 
no wise be natural. The events that appear 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 147 

fortuitous or accidental to us, can only be 
attributed to Divine Providence, and what 
we call fortune or chance is nothing else but 
the decrees of that Providence. For, indeed, 
reason cannot be satisfied in referring to 
imaginary beings a power which can de- 
pend only upon the will of God and his Pro- 
vidence, who watches over all Nature and 
maintains therein the most astonishing order 
and harmony; who suspended from the vault 
of the heavens those glorious luminaries that 
give light throughout the immensity of its 
extent; who poised our globe at that just 
distance which both secures it from the de- 
vouring fires of the burning sun and the 
piercing rigours of eternal frost. What cre- 
ated mind is able to make an exact enume- 
ration of his w r orks? A single reflection on 
them is enough to banish all the seducing 
passions of the heart; and a single glance on 
the grandeur and magnificence of the objects 
which the spectacle of the universe displays 
before our admiring eyes, is enough to make 
all our doubts vanish .in the bosom of evi- 
dence, and all our homage rise to the throne 
of the Creator. 

l 2 



148 THE RELIGIOX OF PHILOSOPHY. 



Children, 

I have exerted myself to the best of my 
powers, to promote your welfare in this life, 
and ensure your happiness in the next. I 
feel conscious of having performed a parent's 
duty by you all. Read, then, attentively; 
contemplate serious! y, and judge deliberately 
what I have thus with the utmost consideration 
put together, as the last, best duty I could un- 
dertake for your good. May our Almighty, 
Heavenly Father bless and guide your endea- 
vours to his own glory ! 



The following select extracts from the 
Royal Psalmist being apjilicable to the 
main subject of this Treatise, I know 
not how better to confirm and conclude 
what is therein advanced. 

The fool saith in his heart, there is no 
God. 

The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, 
and my deliverer: my God, my strength, in 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 149 

whom I will trust. The Lord liveth, and 
blessed is my rock. Let the God of my 
salvation be exalted. 

The heavens declare the glory of God, 
and the firmament showeth his handy work. 
The law of the Lord is perfect, conferring 
the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, 
making wise the simple. 

What man is he that feareth the Lord? 
Hiin shall he teach in the way that he shall 
choose. His soul shall dwell at ease, and his 
seed shall inherit the earth. 

Examine me, O Lord! and prove me: try 
my reins and my heart; that I may publish 
with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of 
all thy wondrous works. 

Give ear unto the Lord, O ye mighty! 
give unto the Lord glory and strength ; give 
unto the Lord the glory due to his name; 
worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. 

Let all the earth fear the Lord ; let all the 
inhabitants of the world.' stand in awe of him. 
O magnify the Lord with me, and let us 
exalt his name together. Come, ye children ! 
and hearken unto me; I will teach you the 
fear of the Lord. 

Blessed is the man that maketh the Lord 



150 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

his trust, and respecteth not the proud nor 
such as turn aside to lies. I delight to do 
thy will, O my God! yea, thy law is within 
my heart. I have preached righteousness in 
the great congregation; lo! I have not re- 
fraiiedtmy lips. 

Hear this, all ye people ! give ear, all ye 
inhabitants of the world ! They that trust in 
their wealth, and boast themselves in the 
multitude of their riches, none of them can 
by any means redeem his brother, nor give a 
railsom for him that he should live for ever 
and not see corruption. But God will re- 
deem my soul from the power of the grave. 

Have mercy upon me, O God! according 
to thy loving kindness: according unto the 
multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out 
my transgressions. 

Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye 
lands! sing forth the honour of his name, 
make his praise glorious. 

In thee, O Lord! do I put my trust; let 
me never be put to confusion. Let my 
mouth be filled with thy praise and with thy 
honour all the day. Cast me not off in the 
time of old age; forsake me not when my 
strength faileth. 



THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 151 

There is none like unto thee, O Lord! 
neither are there any works like unto thy- 
works. All nations, whom thou hast made, 
shall come and worship before thee, O Lord ! 
and shall glorify thy name. For thou art 
great, and doest wondrous things; thou art 
God alone. 

We spend our years as a tale that is told : 
the days of our years are three-score and ten ; 
and if by reason of strength they be four- 
score years, yet is their strength labour and 
sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly 
away. So teach us to number our days, that 
we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. 

O sing unto the Lord a new song; sing 
unto the Lord, all the earth! Declare his 
glory among the heathen, his wonders among 
all people. For the Lord is great, and great- 
ly to be praised, and he is to be feared 
above all gods. For all the gods of the 
nations are idols, but the Lord created all 
things. 

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye 
lands! Serve the Lord with gladness, come 
before his presence with thanksgiving. For 
the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, 
and his truth endureth to all generations. 



152 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Bless the Lord, O my soul! and all that 
is within me, bless his holy name ! Bless 
the Lord, O my soul! and forget not all his 
benefits. 

The Lord is merciful, and graciously slow 
to anger, and plenteous in mercy. 

For as the heaven is high above the earth, 
so great is his mercy toward them that fear 
him.. 

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the 
Lord pitieth them that fear him. 

*As for man, his days are as grass; as a 
flower of the field, so he flourisheth. 

For the wind passeth over it and it is 
gone, and the place thereof shall know it no 
more. 

But the mercy of the Lord is everlasting 
upon them that fear him, and his righteous- 
ness unto children's children. 

Bless the Lord, &U his works, in all places 
of his dominions! Bless the Lord, O my 
soul ! 

THE END. 



Maurice, Printer, 
Howford-bnildipgs, Fenchurch-st. 




4 *fl Deacidified using the Bookkeeper pro 
—J Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2004 



